Rowan Holzberger (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm actually glad I've had a bit of a chance to reflect on my contribution last night, which was critical of the coalition. I had sat through the member for Parkes's contribution and was surprised to hear that the coalition's position seems to be hardening against this bill, the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. If debate is worth anything in this place, I make a direct appeal to those opposite to support this bill because it is so important that we get this right. I know that there is a lot of goodwill across both sides of the House to make this work. So, in a way, I regret my contribution because we shouldn't be politicising this issue. This is an issue which is of deep importance and deep concern in our communities.

I really implore the coalition to look inside themselves and see the importance of supporting this bill. If this bill doesn't get through, if we don't make the changes that need to be made to the NDIS, we know that the support in the community for it is going to collapse and then therefore the entire scheme will collapse. That's quite apart from the fact that the NDIS is, as it is, completely unworkable for the public, for the providers and also for the participants who rely on it. We all know that. As good local members, we all have a million stories.

I have, I think, an even deeper appreciation than a lot of people because of my son, who is an adult autistic human being. He's just recently been diagnosed as level 2 autistic, which means that he is now automatically eligible for inclusion on the NDIS. But I'll say what I've been saying for years, which is that the NDIS is not made for my son. The only reason he has even gone through the process, the very expensive and really quite awful process, of being diagnosed is that there are no supports that exist outside the NDIS anymore. That is what is underlying all of the changes to the NDIS. Nobody listening to my contribution should think that it is just about throwing people off the NDIS into nothing. That is absolutely not something that I would support. As part of this, I am going to be continuing to fight to see those supports established outside the NDIS for people that the scheme wasn't designed for.

These are figures which I saw some years ago, probably about 2022 or 2023, but, in Forde, we've got about 8,000 people on the NDIS, and there are other electorates in Queensland where there are about half that number. If there are 8,000 people actually on the NDIS, that means there are probably another 8,000 people who really need services that would otherwise be provided if the NDIS weren't there. The idea that the NDIS should be the only lifeboat in the ocean is the reason why it has crashed, effectively; everyone has tried to scramble on board because it is the only thing available.

On Friday, I got an email, and then I called Rebecca. She's the mum of a two-year-old, Phoenix, with spina bifida. By the way, if you ever met Phoenix, you would see what a perfect little child he is. He is just the happiest, most charismatic little kid that I've ever met. Despite the fact that he was born with spina bifida, they thought he would live a perfectly full and active life. But he had complications when he was a baby, and it got to the point where the illness in his brain was so severe that the doctors basically decided they couldn't operate. In fact, the advice to the mother was, effectively, to just let him die.

No mother is going to put up with that news, and so she fought. In Queensland you're able to invoke something called Ryan's Rule, where you get a second opinion, and she did that. She got a second opinion and she found a doctor who would operate. It saved his life, but unfortunately it left little Phoenix unable to walk, unable to talk and unable to even roll over. But you wouldn't know any of this if you met Phoenix. I got to meet him on Saturday. For just the smile on his face, it was such a privilege for me to have met him.

But, at the moment, Rebecca can't get an electric wheelchair through the NDIS. She has been fighting for months to get this wheelchair. She's got a second-hand wheelchair, and, when Phoenix sits in it, his arms are literally scraping against the wheels, and he's got blisters on the inside of his elbows. He's got blisters on his little arms because the only wheelchair she can find for him to get about in is totally inappropriate for him. If the scheme was designed for anybody, it was designed for Phoenix. Rebecca having to fight through this system to get what Phoenix needs is exhibit A for why we need fundamental change in the NDIS.

But, of course, it's not just little Phoenix. We've all got a million stories, and there are a couple more that I'd like to talk about. One is about a mum called Alex and her young child, Hunter, who I think is four years old. When she first met me, before Christmas last year, she was desperate to get funding so that she could put him into a specialist childcare centre that would take a special-needs kid. When she sat there meeting me, he was climbing over her, biting her and hitting her. It was difficult enough for her to have the meeting with me, but I can't imagine what it must be like for her as a single mum trying to do all this on her own—trying to fight the NDIS at the same time as trying to get the supports she needs.

Her concern before Christmas was that if she didn't get the funding to be able to put him in this specialist childcare centre then she wouldn't be able to work. She'd have to leave her job. Because she would have to leave her job, she wouldn't be able to pay her rent. She was concerned that she was going to be sleeping in the car with her severely disabled child—and you know what? That's exactly what happened over Christmas. She didn't get the funding, she lost her job and she spent time sleeping in her car with her severely disabled child. The question is whether the NDIS should be funding that or if there is a failure in the wider system that means that she is trying to jump onto the NDIS because it's the only thing available.

The dysfunction of the NDIS—I think I'll finish with this story. I remember this from a couple of years ago. There was somebody who had come to us for help. She was trying to get an assistance dog for her child. The agency approved $5,000 in specialist reports. They approved another $2,000 on top of that for support coordination to get those reports together to see whether or not the child would benefit from having a dog. The report said, yes, the child would benefit from having a dog. She gave those reports to the NDIA, and what do you reckon happened? The NDIA refused the dog. So there she was—stuck in a system, going through the reviews, going through the ART.

I remember when it was, because it was during COVID. After a year of fighting for this dog, she was about to go into the hearing. The night before the hearing—this is why I remember when it was—she'd had a COVID test in order to show that she was able to go to the hearing the next day. The NDIA caved and gave her the dog. So many times, we see that the reports and the diagnosis that people get and then provide to the NDIS bear absolutely no relationship to the plan that they get at the end of it. I have heard from serious sources within the NDIA as well that that is true. There is no correlation between somebody's diagnosis and somebody's reports and the plan that they end up getting at the end of it.

There is a lot of work to do, and there is a lot of concern in the community at the moment that this is about throwing people off the NDIS into nothing. As far as I'm concerned, nothing could be further from the truth. This is about stabilising the NDIS for people who it is meant to be for, but it is also about expanding the supports that exist outside the NDIS. Thriving Kids, for example, which the government has made a significant commitment to—and I do also hope that the Queensland government gets its act together and puts something in place—is going to tackle the problem that exists in the electorate I represent. Take the suburb of Eagleby. One in seven kids between the ages of nine and 14 is on the NDIS. One in seven kids is totally unsustainable. It's absolutely unworkable if it's going to be maintained at those sorts of numbers.

I call on the opposition. I really believe that you are going to end up supporting this. I know that, quite rightly, you want to make sure that this legislation is properly examined—absolutely. But outright opposition to this legislation will, I think, mean the collapse of the NDIS. The public have had enough. We all know that the status quo is just not on. Let's make this work for the people that it was intended for. Let's make the whole system work for the people who won't be on the NDIS. To that, I commend the bill to this House.

Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For hundreds of thousands of Australians, the NDIS has been transformative. It has not just provided services. It has also provided dignity, autonomy and participation in this country. I do support a sustainable NDIS, and the scheme has grown excessively. It will cost more than $56 billion next financial year, while covering only 760,000 Australians. It's clear that its unchecked growth has already begun to undermine the social licence of the scheme and that reform is necessary. The question before the House is whether this reform is necessary, and it's my position that it is not. It is not fair and it is not reasonable. The people who will bear the cost of this unfair reform are not the government; they're the vulnerable Australians who rely on this scheme to live.

It's my view that the cost trajectory of the NDIS has been driven, overall, by the structural design flaws that were visible from the outset and which have been ignored by successive governments. They are design flaws that are real and that were foreseeable. The scheme has always been uncapped. It's been left to a quasi-market in which the consumer has no incentive to economise. Without transparent information and sufficient competition, the self-correcting forces of market theory have never materialised. The budget-setting processes have compounded this. Plans have inflated year on year through a system that is subjective, that is inconsistent and that is poorly connected to individual need. The government is now resorting to the most blunt cost-containment instrument available. It is constraining eligibility and participant budgets to force the economies that the market failed to generate and that governments have failed to legislate.

This scheme should never have absorbed early childhood intervention. It was never designed to deliver that well. About 170,000 children received early intervention supports from the NDIS in 2025. Those supports are often delivered poorly, at costs that are higher than they need to be and in a way that has driven an avalanche of diagnoses without improving outcomes for children. The number of adults on the NDIS is only marginally higher than was expected when the scheme was planned. The number of children is more than double, and this is the central driver of the scheme's growth.

The solution is clear: the NDIS should be reserved, as was always intended, for children with permanent and significant disability. We should carve early childhood interventions out of the NDIS. We should deliver them as properly funded, separately commissioned programs. The government's Thriving Kids program will move in that direction, but it doesn't cover school aged children aged nine and above and not all states have even come on board with it. A safety net, which some states will decline to deliver, is a gap through which vulnerable children and families will fall.

The centrepiece of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 is a shift from diagnosis based eligibility to functional capacity assessment. The scheme was always meant to be limited to those with substantially reduced functional capacity, but, over time, eligibility shifted to a diagnosis gateway because defining permanence and capacity is hard in the absence of a specific diagnosis. A move to mandatory independent assessments of a person's functional capacity was trialled and failed horribly in 2021. The government is now proposing to revisit that horrible failure. It's asking parliament to legislate a fundamental change to eligibility in one of our most important social schemes and to authorise the removal of 160,000 people from the scheme before it has decided what the threshold for functional capacity will be, how it will be measured and who will be affected, on the basis of undetermined criteria and a non-existent assessment tool. It is an extraordinary thing to ask of this House, and it violates the recommendations of the independent review in 2023.

Among the most concerning provisions in this bill is the new definition of permanent disability, for eligibility purposes. Under this bill, an impairment will only be considered permanent if 'all appropriate treatment' options have been exhausted, no further treatment is likely to 'materially improve, reverse or alleviate' the impairment and the impairment is likely to be lifelong. So applicants have to have tried all treatments commonly available, regardless of whether or not they can afford them or whether they're accessible where they live. A person in rural or regional Australia might be unable to access the specialist treatment that is, theoretically, available in a capital city. A person with limited income might be unable to afford treatments that aren't funded by Medicare. Treatments available elsewhere in the world may not yet be affordable in Australia. There is a profound and unresolved circularity here. The bill proposes to deny access to support until treatment has been exhausted without acknowledging that the capacity to access treatment may itself depend on having NDIS support.

The permanence threshold also uses the word 'alleviate', which sets a very low bar. Even a modest improvement in function—a small gain in mobility or a slight reduction in pain—could be used to argue that an impairment is not permanent, which could render an individual ineligible for supports. Many conditions, including many forms of psychosocial disability, are permanent but fluctuating or episodic. Demanding permanence as a condition of support sets a threshold which might, at times, be difficult to meet.

The bill also limits support to those whose impairments independently meet the eligibility threshold. The combined or overlapping impact of concurrent conditions, or comorbidities, on daily functioning will no longer be considered. That's not how disability works. It's not how human beings work. It is, however, how a cost containment approach to disability works.

The bill grants the minister a significant new power to set percentage reductions in funding for entire categories of support, across all participants in those categories, without appropriate parliamentary oversight. The law requires that participant safety be considered, but it's hard to see how broad cuts across entire support categories could be implemented without serious risk to individuals. The original NDIS guaranteed funding for supports which are assessed as reasonable and necessary for that person, but this bill replaces individual rights with ministerial discretion across entire support categories. It is a profound shift in the philosophy of the scheme.

The bill also significantly tightens the conditions under which participants can request unscheduled plan assessments—reviews outside the normal cycle. Currently, one in five NDIS plans undergoes an unscheduled reassessment every year. The government has argued that this has driven plan inflation, noting that plans grow by an average of 20 per cent following those reassessments—which suggests that the plans were inadequate in the first instance. Restricting access to reassessment where a person's needs have actually changed, genuinely changed—where they've had a medical deterioration or a breakdown in their current supports—won't reduce their need. It will just reduce the opportunity to have that need recognised and supported. The consequences of that will, again, be borne by the participants.

While the eligibility assessment tool that the government is planning to develop does not yet exist, the support needs assessment tool, the I-CAN, is scheduled to roll out from April 2027. It's planned that the I-CAN will generate plan budgets automatically. Appeal rights are curtailed. The Administrative Review Tribunal will no longer be able to directly alter plan funds. It's worth noting that, currently, 73 per cent of the sorts of appeals that we see at the ART are successful. Assessment using the I-CAN involves a one- to three-hour structured interview, which will be conducted by public servants for whom an allied health background is not mandatory. Independent medical evidence no longer has to be considered. The model assumes that participants can reliably describe their own needs in a formal, structured setting—that they won't be masking, that they won't be exhausted, that they won't be overwhelmed. That assumption will fail for many people with a disability, especially those with autism and complex psychosocial needs. We have a cautionary precedent in the aged-care sector. In that system, we've already seen algorithms that override experienced clinicians, fail to capture genuine need and leave people without access to essential care. If algorithms are going to determine who receives support and who goes without, their apparatus must be completely open to public scrutiny. The government has not made credible commitments to that sort of transparency.

The minister has leaned heavily on narratives about rorting and fraud, in building a political case for these reforms, but that framing is incomplete. The Australian National Audit Office has confirmed that the quality and safeguards commission is only 'partly effective in exercising its regulatory functions' and that it does not have full visibility of the market that it purports to regulate. And it's been claimed in Crikey that the auditing system itself is corrupted by structural conflicts of interest. Fraud in Medicare amounts to $3 billion every year, which is as much as three per cent of Commonwealth health expenditure. But it is the NDIS which is being demonised as a national embarrassment, the blame for which falls disproportionately on participants, not the providers who are actually profiting from system failure. The government has chosen to tighten the screws on people with a disability while leaving the pathways to system abuse almost entirely intact.

One of the most immediately harmful elements of this package is the scaling back of social and community participation budgets, with allocations to be cut by 50 per cent and capacity building daily activity budgets to be cut by 10 per cent from October of this year. Let's remember that we're talking about the supports that help people with disability leave their homes to work, to manage their relationships, to participate in community life and to avoid social isolation. The $200 million Inclusive Communities Fund announced as a substitute is welcome in principle, but it is not equivalent, it is not adequate and it does not yet exist. We are removing supports before the likely inadequate replacement infrastructure is in place.

The government proposes to expand mandatory registration to cover providers delivering personal care, daily living supports and support in closed settings, and I don't oppose that in principle. But the government has not included the self-directed registration category explicitly recommended by the NDIS Provider and Worker Registration Taskforce. This was a recommendation designed to protect the choice and control of participants who rely on flexible, individualised arrangements with unregistered providers. It's yet another decision that is at odds with the founding principles of the NDIS.

We could take an alternative pathway with the NDIS, a path that would moderate growth to five to six per cent while improving outcomes for participants, but that would require the government to confront the structural drivers of cost blowouts rather than resorting to swingeing and ill-directed cuts. It would mean generally carving out early childhood intervention services. It would mean properly funding Thriving Kids for all school-age kids. It would mean establishing functional foundational supports that would enable skills development, self-advocacy, employment training, social and community participation, and carer programs.

It would mean reforming the planning system not by layering more rules onto a failing framework but by replacing subjective decision-making with consistent, needs based budgets paired with genuine flexibility in how they're going to be used. It would mean addressing the fact that nearly a third of NDIS funding goes to just five per cent of participants but many of their group home arrangements are expensive, are poorly overseen and deliver poor outcomes for those individuals. Individualised living arrangements can deliver much better quality of life at lower cost.

We would also need to fix the auditing and compliance system that currently profits from the scheme rather than safeguarding it, which is not the primary aim of the changes made in this legislation. The government's margin for error in implementing these reforms is vanishingly small—cutting supports before alternatives exist, changing eligibility before the assessment tool is even designed, granting the minister sweeping powers over support categories without adequate safeguards, restricting plan reviews within a week of royal assent. This is not reform done well. This is reform done fast and badly.

People with disability in Kooyong and across this country deserve a scheme that is sustainable but gives them dignity. They deserve to have their voices heard in this place in the fundamental design of the system on which their lives depend. The scheme's founding slogan was 'nothing about us without us'. It was a principle that many disabled Australians fought for. This bill does not honour that principle. In recognition of the negligible consultation timeframe that the government has afforded participants for this legislation, a timeframe that is inherently inaccessible for disabled people, I move:

That all words after "the bill" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"is being examined by the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs, with a submission closing date of   .29 May 2026, giving just two weeks for contributions;

(b) action 25.2 of the NDIS Independent Review called on the Department to undertake 'deep public consultation on proposed legislative reforms' including with people with disability, families, carers, Disability Representative Organisations, providers and workers;

(c) the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability found that 'people with disability are not sufficiently involved in government decision-making processes and developing laws and policies that may impact their human rights';

(d) Article 4(3) of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities require the Government to 'closely consult with and actively involve persons with disabilities, through their representative organisations' when developing legislation that affects them;

(e) guidance from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet states that consultation on legislation 'should not generally be less than a month', and that where substantial feedback is expected, consultation should be even longer; and

(f) short timeframes are inherently inaccessible and people with disability may require additional time to participate meaningfully in consultation processes; and

(2) calls on the Government to extend the submission deadline for the Senate inquiry so that participants, families, carers, and disability representative organisations have at least four weeks to respond".

Marion Scrymgour (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

( ):  Is there a seconder for the motion?

Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Ali France (Dickson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. I love the NDIS, I love that Labor created it, and we are not about to let it crumble. The NDIS is dignity, opportunity and independence for people with significant disability. It has been life-changing for participants and families, and that is not going to change. It is the gateway to fulfilled, happy, productive lives. But it must deliver. It must be safe. It must be equitable. It must be sustainable. The public must have confidence in the scheme, and people with a significant disability must be at the centre of the scheme.

I know many participants and families are feeling anxious and distressed by the idea of change, by the changes in this bill. Years and years of constant talk of change and cuts would be incredibly distressing for the disability community. But we've all known for some time that the NDIS is not working as it should. Thank you to the member for Forde for the examples he described in his speech. It's not running as it originally intended, and, as a community, we must be really honest about that. Having unregistered providers is not safe for participants and has led to fraud and rorts. Every time I see a story about a provider or an individual scamming the system, it makes me physically sick. The NDIS has become a rorter's paradise and a postcode lottery where many people with significant disability are missing out due to market failure. I know this, providers know this, and the general public knows this. We are livid that the scheme we love, over nine years under those opposite, was allowed to disintegrate, riddled by fraud, inequity and a complete lack of safeguards for participants. I know the majority of providers are good and the needs of people with disability are at the very heart of everything that they do. I know that they want the rorters out too.

As soon as we came to government in 2022, we ordered a review, and what I heard was worse than I ever anticipated. There were no basic fraud or compliance controls in the nine long years that the NDIS had been operating. And that's not my assessment; that comes from the National Audit Office—zero. The fact that the states and territories were given the green light to step away, to stop being the provider of last resort, to stop delivering support when no other provider was willing to set up in a country town, to stop providing support to those who need support but don't qualify for the NDIS—that left a deep hole in our mainstream systems of support. During our Thriving Kids inquiry, we heard a lot of evidence of families having to either travel or go without support because there was none available in their town. I spoke with the mum of a participant a few years ago who was absolutely thrilled that her adult son was able to move into purpose built independent living designed for his needs. For the first time as a man in his 30s, he'd lived away from his parents. But, when he moved in, he was unable to get the nursing support, despite having the funding for it. He lived a two-hour drive from Brisbane in a large regional town where there were many participants but zero providers of 24-hour nursing care. He tried desperately to get the state back involved in his care. The alternative was to go back to his parents or a nursing home. Sadly, we know that this case is not isolated. We need to change this because the impact on people with a disability in rural and remote communities is horrendous.

A diagnosis based system has also meant that many kids are missing out on early intervention supports. There are years-long waiting lists for both adults and children for diagnosis, and many can't afford to get a diagnosis, which can often cost thousands of dollars. We are losing big providers, like Centacare in Queensland, that primarily provide support for people with very complex and significant disabilities, because the current funding model for providers does not account for the level of compliance training and staff management that these organisations must undertake. Some of the very people this scheme was designed for are very gradually being left without care, either because there is no provider of last resort in remote communities or because the big not-for-profits are shutting down because they simply can't afford to exist.

Since coming to government four years ago, we've done extensive reviews. We've taken steps to curb fraud and rorts and have halved the growth rate of the scheme. However, it's clear that, in order to be able to deliver for people with permanent and significant disability, we need deep structural change. We need support outside the NDIS. The states must step back in, and I'm really, really worried about that. I can see that they are reluctant. I can see the 'it's too hard' vibes from some state premiers. It can't be too hard, because this is simply too important. We need our state leaders to step up. Changing the NDIS is going to be really hard for participants, for our community and for providers, but we must all take a very deep breath and get it done, not for participants like me, now, but for our disability community into the future.

This bill is part of our plan to secure the NDIS and return the scheme to its original intent, providing lifetime support for Australians with permanent and significant disability, and, as the member for Kooyong acknowledged, it addresses well-recognised design flaws. The changes in this bill respond directly to the disability royal commission and the Independent Review of the NDIS. It also takes up the advice of the NDIS Provider and Worker Registration Taskforce and the findings of the Audit Office's work on fraud and control in the scheme. This reform is built on the evidence, the feedback from disability peak bodies and the stories of those who have graciously given evidence to many inquiries.

The bill is made up of five schedules which collectively address issues on how people access the scheme, how their plans are managed and how we can properly regulate, monitor and investigate how money is spent. The bill also increases the decision-making powers of the minister and makes way for transitional arrangements. Key changes in the bill include a definition in the act of 'substantially reduced functional capacity' and how that will be assessed in a consistent, evidence-based way. This means access to the scheme will be based on a transparent assessment of a person's functional capacity rather than on a specific diagnosis.

Getting this part of the bill right matters, and it matters a lot to the disability community. That is why I am pleased that a technical advisory group will be established to advise on the right threshold and the right assessments, informed by consultation with the disability community and with the states and territories. The bill also clarifies what it means for a support to be 'reasonable and necessary' and what 'permanent' means for people applying to access the scheme.

We will also reduce the number of unscheduled plan reassessments. Some of those requests are being made by intermediaries—middle men and women—sometimes without the participant even knowing. Under this bill, only a participant, or their nominee or guardian, will be able to request an unscheduled reassessment, and only when there has been a genuine, significant and ongoing change in their circumstances. It introduces a legislated end date for every plan so that plans are properly renewed rather than rolled over indefinitely. Unspent funds will no longer be carried forward in a way that inflates plans over time.

This bill finally gives the NDIA the powers it needs to properly regulate, monitor and investigate the payment of more than $50 billion every year. It clarifies the definition of 'NDIS provider', which has been so broad that mainstream retailers are now defined as NDIS providers, and it introduces a range of new civil penalties so that there are real consequences for fraud and noncompliance that has gone unchecked for far too long. Right now, only one in 16 providers is registered. I completely understand that for some of the smaller providers the system that has been set up to date is not built for them. This bill builds the framework to change that.

This bill also reforms the plan management market, enabling the government to commission a panel of plan managers that are held to real standards on governance, integrity and conflicts of interest, and to commission a new, higher-quality support coordination and connection service. The bill gives the minister the power to be the decision-maker on pricing, acting on the advice of the NDIA's annual pricing review, and it gives the agency the ability to recover money from a provider when a participant has been overcharged.

If we want the NDIS to be the system it was intended to be—to truly provide security and dignity for people with disability—the NDIS needs the structural change proposed in this bill. I know these changes are going to be hard, I know these changes are fuelling anxiety and I know constantly advocating for your needs is so exhausting. For many this reform is a hard pill to swallow. But for others it is hope that help is on the way to their local town, to their community. We can no longer have a two-tier NDIS where, if you live in the cities and you have a package and you can access services and you have the health literacy to make applications for those services, you have a completely different experience than if you don't have health literacy or if you live in a regional or rural town and there are very limited providers where the market has failed. We can no longer have a system where some people with disability and significant disability are in and some people with significant disability are out.

We are committed to ensuring the NDIS delivers essential supports to Australians with significant and permanent disability not just today but for generations to come. Our responsibility is to build a NDIS that is fair, consistent and empowering—one that places people with significant disability at its heart. I commend this bill to the House.

Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. I begin my contribution with something deeply personal that reflects what is at stake when it comes to these NDIS reforms. In my hometown of Geraldton, my friend Clara has a beautiful son, Sam, who is 27 years old. Sam comes into my office every week and helps with shredding documents and stacking the photocopiers. But what he really brings to the office goes far beyond that. The best thing Sam does in my office is share his smile—lots of fist bumps and lots of hugs. If you are lucky enough to receive one of those hugs, you'll know how genuinely special you are to Sam.

Sam is nonverbal and will never live independently. Clara and other carers provide a level of care for Sam that is continuous and unending. Yet, even with that incredible love and commitment, the announcement of changes in this bill has left Clara with a profound sense of fear and anxiety. She said:

I absolutely hate the fear that the never ending threats from/to the NDIS cause families.

The lack of clarity and certainty is chronically stressful. It's crucial to understand that Clara is already a burnt-out mum. She's spent years navigating a life filled with appointments, red tape, fighting for services and daily advocacy to make sure that Sam has access and opportunities.

This story of Sam and his family is not unique. In fact, we've heard many similar stories throughout the contributions to this legislation. In Durack, our electorate, there are more than 4,500 NDIS participants. Each of them has a story, a family and carers who are likely stretched to their absolute limits. These reforms are not abstract policy adjustments; they are decisions that will shape the daily reality of thousands of Australians, let's face it, many of whom are doing it really tough, particularly in regional and remote communities.

The coalition remains firmly committed to the NDIS. It is one of the most important social reforms in our nation's history. For many Australians, the NDIS has transformed lives by providing independence and support. But, for it to continue to achieve these outcomes, it must be sustainable, properly governed and delivered with clarity and certainty for participants and their families. We acknowledge that the scheme has grown significantly from an original estimate of 410,000 participants to more than 760,000 participants today. Costs have risen accordingly, from an estimated $13.6 billion to around $50 billion this year, and are projected to reach $70 billion by the end of the decade. That trajectory is clearly not sustainable, and it is entirely responsible for any government to address this. But addressing changes to NDIS does require proper consultation. Inexplicably, the Labor government has failed to consult. What is deeply concerning families like Sam's is not whether reform is needed but how it is being done and the fear and uncertainty it is creating. That is what happens when you fail to consult.

This bill introduces a fundamental shift in eligibility, moving from diagnosis based access to a functional capacity model. While the intent is to improve consistency and evidence based decision-making, the government has not yet provided the operational details. The thresholds, tools and assessment processes have not yet been released. That vacuum of detail is already creating widespread anxiety. Families are asking, quite understandably, whether they, their children or their loved ones will continue to qualify for support. At this stage, the government cannot provide a clear answer.

We are also facing a major administrative challenge. Existing participants will be progressively reassessed between 2028 and 2030. With over 760,000 Australians in the scheme, that represents an enormous workload and, more importantly, a very deeply personal and stressful process for individuals and families who may have—I'm sure they have—already undergone many, many assessments throughout their lives. For parents like Clara and Damian, the administrative burden of having to repeatedly provide the same information, navigate the red tape and endure bureaucratic delays, coupled with the high needs of an independent child or adult with a disability, I think we will all agree, could be incredibly overwhelming. It can lead to depression, relationship strain and significant financial pressure.

I'm sharing Clara's experience with her consent because she wants other parents who may be feeling similarly isolated or overwhelmed to know that they are not alone. Clara, at a very low point in her life, believed that putting them down or out of their misery was the most practical and rational option available to her. That meant murder-suicide was a very real possibility. Thankfully, Clara sought support, and life is very different now. This is not hyperbole. These are real people in real situations trying to do the best for their children with significant and permanent disabilities. In this place, we owe it to them to do better.

The bill also tightens unscheduled planned reassessments, restricts who can request them and narrows the circumstances under which they can occur. While there are legitimate concerns about misuse and system integrity, we must ensure that participants whose needs genuinely change are not left unsupported. Changes to planned structures, fixed end dates and restrictions on unspent funds also raise serious questions about responsiveness. The NDIS was designed to adapt to changing circumstances, and that flexibility must not be lost. Similarly, the new framework for reasonable and necessary supports, including the minister's expanded ability to set funding parameters, must be implemented incredibly carefully. While fiscal discipline is important, it cannot come at the expense of participants' independence, participation and general wellbeing.

The integrity measures in this bill deserve support. Stronger record keeping, tighter claims timeframes, improved provider regulation and enhanced fraud prevention powers—I think we'd all agree that they are necessary. The scheme has been subject to misuse, and, of course, that must be addressed. But integrity alone is not enough. Transparency, consultation and careful implementation are critical to give participants confidence, not confusion. In short, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We must also ensure that plan suspensions, eligibility reviews and compliance mechanisms do not inadvertently penalise vulnerable participants due to administrative or communication barriers.

At its core, the question before us is whether we are building a system that is financially sustainable but humanly sustainable. In regional areas like Durack, access to allied health services is already limited. Families travel long distances, wait months for appointments and pay significant out-of-pocket costs for essential care. Any increase in administrative burden or uncertainty compounds these challenges.

I'm reminded that I spoke in this place in only 2025 about Labor's snap NDIS decision to remove regional loading and reduce travel support, which, of course, impacts rural and regional therapy providers and recipients. At the time, I spoke with NDIS providers across the Kimberley, the mid-west and the Pilbara, and they told me of their issues with the travel reforms and the inevitable impact on essential service delivery. It's clear to me, and to all of us, that the NDIS has blown out of its original intent, but surely it was not the place to start with the remotest and our most vulnerable people in our country—people who have real health needs? Labor was urged to consult more broadly on those proposed changes, and I'm not convinced that they did.

We owe it to the participants and families to get this latest round of changes right. That means clear rules, genuine consultation with the disability community and a transition that does not leave people in limbo for years. The NDIS must remain true to its founding purpose to support Australians with permanent and significant disability to live with dignity, independence and opportunity. That purpose must not be overshadowed by fiscal targets alone.

The coalition is committed to working with the government to get the NDIS settings right—unlike Labor when it was in opposition. It took every opportunity to politicise the NDIS and resisted all attempts by the coalition to make NDIS more sustainable. I've listened to many speeches here today from Labor government representatives, all laying the blame for the way the NDIS was rolled out more recently at the foot of the coalition. But I've sat here during these years—I've been here since 2013—and I know that our ministers have worked very hard and worked very closely with Bill Shorten when he was the opposition spokesperson for NDIS, and I'm telling you that it was politicised beyond comprehension. So it really sticks in my gut to hear this rubbish coming from those opposite about what we have done to NDIS. It was politicised by them from day one. I think they should hang their heads in shame.

If we fail to provide clarity and certainty in how these reforms are implemented, we do risk undermining the very trust that the scheme depends on. Ultimately it is that trust between families like Clara's, participants like Sam and the system itself that must be protected above all else. Sam and his family remind us every day why this work in this place matters. Sam may never speak with his voice, but his presence, his smile and his hugs communicate what all of us in this House must understand: the NDIS is about real people, real lives and real dignity. In this parliament and within this bill and its implementation, we must never lose sight of that fact. I thank the House.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. The National Disability Insurance Scheme is one of the most important social reforms in modern Australian history. It has changed Australia for the better. Before the NDIS, too many Australians with disability and their families were left to navigate a fragmented, crisis driven system that depended far too heavily on luck, postcode and personal circumstance. Families were forced to fight endlessly for support. Parents carried enormous burdens alone. Too many Australians with disability were excluded from opportunities that many of us take for granted.

The creation of the NDIS changed that. It represented a fundamental shift in how our nation understood disability, not through a lens of charity or limitation but through a belief in dignity, capability, inclusion and rights. For the first time, Australians with disability were placed at the centre of decisions about their own lives. Labor created the NDIS based on a simple but powerful principle: disability should never be a barrier to living a full and meaningful life. Over the past decade we've seen the extraordinary impact of that Labor vision.

The NDIS has helped Australians with disability access therapies, equipment, care and supports that have transformed lives. It has enabled children to participate more fully at school. It has helped young people build confidence and independence. It has supported pathways into employment, education, sport, the arts and community life. It has allowed people to live more independently and with greater choice and control over their futures. And it has provided reassurance and support to families and carers who for too long carried overwhelming responsibilities alone.

The NDIS has not only changed lives; it has changed our country. It's one of Australia's great human rights achievements. It has strengthened our understanding of inclusion, it has challenged outdated assumptions about disability and it has reaffirmed something fundamental about Australia: every person deserves the opportunity to participate fully in society. That's why the NDIS should be a point of enormous national pride. It reflects the very best of the Australian character: fairness, compassion and the belief that no-one should be left behind. In my community of Newcastle, we understand that better than most.

Newcastle was one of the original NDIS trial sites. Our region helped shape the national rollout of the scheme. More than 10,000 people were participating in our region. Long before the NDIS became a national institution, people in Newcastle were helping demonstrate what was possible when Australians with disability were given the support they deserved, and that is something our city is deeply proud of. Today, thousands of Novocastrians rely on the NDIS directly, whether it's participants, families, carers or advocates. Thousands more rely on the jobs and the economic opportunities created through the disability care sector.

In Newcastle this is not an abstract policy debate; this is personal. It's about real people, real families and real lives. I've met parents whose children are thriving because they finally have access to therapies and supports that allow them to participate at school and in the community. I've spoken with young people with disability who have gained confidence, independence and pathways into employment because the NDIS gave them opportunities that simply did not exist before. I've met carers who tell me that for the first time in years they no longer feel completely alone in carrying the burden of care. They love their kids, but it's hard work. I've heard stories of people being able to move into more independent living arrangements, to reconnect with communities and to participate in local sporting clubs, pursue creative passions and build friendships and social connections that many of us take for granted.

These stories matter because, when we talk about the NDIS, we are talking about human dignity. We are talking about people having the opportunity to live with greater independence, confidence and security. We are talking about inclusion. We are talking about fairness. That's why maintaining public confidence in, and the social licence of, the NDIS is important. Australians overwhelmingly support the NDIS because they understand its values. They understand that supporting Australians with disability is not only the right thing to do; it strengthens all of us as a nation. The NDIS represents a promise between Australians, a promise that we will look after one another, a promise that disability should never mean exclusion and a promise that every Australian deserves the chance to live a full and meaningful life. Maintaining that social licence also means ensuring the scheme remains strong, trusted and sustainable for generations to come. Supporting the NDIS means being honest about the challenges it faces. Protecting the NDIS means ensuring it remains sustainable, fair and focused on delivering the best outcomes for participants, and that's why reform matters.

I want to say very clearly that people with disability are not to blame for the pressures facing this scheme. The overwhelming majority of people who rely on the NDIS are simply seeking the supports they need to live their lives with dignity and independence. That should never be forgotten in this debate. We must reject any narrative that seeks to stigmatise Australians with disability or portray participants as responsible for broader challenges within the system, because that would fundamentally betray the values on which the NDIS was built. The challenges facing the scheme have far more to do with rapid growth, inconsistencies in administration, gaps in oversight, poor planning processes and, in some cases, exploitation and fraud by unscrupulous operators seeking to profit from vulnerable people. That's where our attention must be focused because every dollar lost to fraud or poor-quality providers is a dollar diverted away from Australians who genuinely need support. If public confidence in the integrity and sustainability of the scheme is undermined over time, that places the long-term future of the NDIS at risk, and none of us should want to see that.

The Albanese Labor government supports the NDIS unequivocally. We believe in it, we defend it and we are determined to ensure it survives and thrives for future generations. That means ensuring the scheme remains sustainable not only financially but also socially and politically. The long-term success of the NDIS depends on maintaining the trust and confidence of the Australian people. It's about ensuring we honour the contract and agreement between all our citizens. Australians want to know that the scheme is fair. They want to know that the supports are going to those who need them the most. They want to know that the safeguards are strong, and they want to know that the system is focused on delivering meaningful outcomes for participants.

Of course, the NDIS participants themselves want the scheme to be the very best it can be. They are literally depending on it. Responsible reform is not about walking away from the NDIS. It's about ensuring we protect it way into the future. It's about strengthening it. It's about preserving one of the greatest social reforms our nation has ever seen.

Importantly, these reforms build on the recommendations of the independent NDIS Review and the disability royal commission. Both processes made it clear that, if we want the NDIS to remain strong into the future, improvements are necessary. That includes strengthening governance, improving consistency, rebuilding trust and ensuring participants remain at the centre of decision-making.

In Newcastle, I know many people in the disability community are anxious about the proposed changes. I have met with participants, advocates and organisations, including the Community Disability Alliance Hunter, about their concerns. They've sat and spoken to me and the minister on these issues. People do want assurance, they want clarity, and they want confidence that reforms will not come at the expense of support—that these reforms will prioritise participant wellbeing, choice and uncompromised access to care.

These are not unreasonable asks, because, for many Australians, the NDIS is not just a government program; it's an essential part of everyday life. Families rely on it. Communities rely on it. Participants rely on it. That's why the consultation matters, that's why implementation matters, and that's why the voices of Australians with disability must remain central to every stage of reform. We cannot talk about people with disability without listening to people with disability, and learning to listen in respectful ways is important. I hope that is a lesson that all of us in the chamber learn as we debate these reforms going forward. Words matter, and respectful debate is always encouraged.

We cannot, we don't get to, preserve the social licence of the NDIS—and that's a collective task of everybody in this parliament—unless Australians continue to see the scheme as fair, compassionate and effective. Labor understands that because Labor has always believed in the NDIS. Labor created it, Labor built it, and Labor is taking responsibility to ensure it remains strong not just for today but for all those generations into the future. That's what responsible government looks like; it's the task before us, because the greatest threat to the NDIS right now is no reform. Despite the anxiety that some participants are feeling about change—understandably so, as I just said—there is no greater threat to the NDIS scheme that they're relying upon than a zero-reform agenda. That would be a diabolical outcome right now.

Participants know that, because they want this scheme to be the very best it can be, and they want to ensure that the services being delivered are absolutely focused on their leading full, meaningful, purposeful lives. So I say the greatest threat would be ignoring the problems that we know are in place for the NDIS. You don't get to ignore those problems until confidence is so badly eroded in the public arena that we don't have an opportunity to do meaningful reform work. The greatest threat, as I said, would be allowing waste, fraud or poor governance to undermine that public confidence and support. The public does support the NDIS. It is one of Australia's proudest social achievements, and the greatest betrayal would be failing to preserve the scheme for future generations of Australians with disability.

I know there are going to be temptations to make political comments across this chamber, but I really do urge people to be thoughtful and respectful in the contributions they make in this debate—both in this House and in the other place, when it happens there. The NDIS is bigger than politics. It must be bigger than politics. It represents our national values. It reflects the kind of country we want Australia to be—a country where people are included and not excluded, a country where dignity matters, a country where fairness matters, a country where every Australian has the opportunity to participate fully in community life. That's what is at stake—protecting inclusion, protecting dignity, protecting opportunity and protecting the future of the NDIS itself—and that is why we must work together to protect and strengthen it for today and for those generations to come.

I think Australia is a compassionate society. I think they want to see this parliament come together in ways that ensure that the NDIS delivers on the promise it makes to the people—to Australians that live with disability each and every day, no matter where they live.

Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to start my response to the debate on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 by stating my support for the intention of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Like most people in this place, I speak to constituents every day in my electorate whose lives have been immeasurably and positively impacted by the support they receive as a result of the NDIS. I often say that, when the right support is delivered at the right time by the right provider, it does more than change lives; it sustains them. That impact extends not only to the person receiving the support but also to their families. To that extent, I'd like to acknowledge a good mate of mine, Connor Bryant from Toormina.

I first met Connor five or six years ago, when he came to one of my mobile offices in Sawtell. Connor is a participant in the NDIS and, at the time, he was experiencing difficulties with funding and access to the scheme. We worked together over a period of time to resolve those issues that were preventing Connor from having access to quality of life. To Connor's credit, he didn't just leave it at that. He didn't want others on the scheme to flounder and not have the care or services that they needed. So, since that time, Connor has been a strong advocate for participants on the Mid North Coast. He meets regularly with support coordinators and support workers to identify and advocate on the individual and unique challenges they face daily. He is now also the chairman of the Coffs Harbour city council Disability Inclusion and Access Advisory Committee, where he has made a huge impact for the disabled community. Connor, good work, mate, and thank you.

The potential for this scheme to do good cannot be overstated. But, unfortunately, in its current condition, the potential for the scheme to be overrun by negative forces is equally as great. It's no secret that the NDIS, as it stands, is not sustainable, a fact that this government finally has openly admitted, despite their, at times, bizarre protestations of the facts before taking the reins. One former Labor minister for the NDIS is famously quoted as saying: 'You can't move around the corridors of parliament in Canberra without tripping over a coalition minister whispering the scheme is unsustainable. I'm here to tell you today that is a lie. The scheme is only threatened in its survival by the incompetent management of the current government. The money is there. The problem is it's not being spent on the right priorities.'

It's interesting to see that those pigeons have now come home to roost as we see the worst budget blowouts in the scheme in its history under Labor. In 2023, the government announced a target growth rate for the NDIS of eight per cent and was unable to achieve it. In January 2026, the Prime Minister announced a new target growth rate for the NDIS of five to six per cent, which the government again failed to meet. In April 2026, the health minister announced yet another new annual target growth rate for the NDIS of two per cent over the next four years, despite the government's ongoing inability to meet any of their previously announced target growth rates. Originally estimated to cost $13.6 billion, the cost of this year's is closer to $50 billion, and it's projected to blow out to $70 billion by the end of the decade if we continue along the same track.

Everyone in this place acknowledges that we cannot let this occur. We cannot stand by and see this vital initiative hurtle even closer to the budgetary cliff. We, as government representatives, must redirect the train back onto the tracks to arrive at the destination it was originally intended to reach, with as few unintended casualties as physically possible—and with no unwelcome passengers.

With that in mind, I'll run through the areas of this bill that we agree with. We agree that the NDIS must be made sustainable immediately to safeguard it for generations to come. We agree that the system is currently rife with fraudulent claims and bad actors. We agree that a new eligibility framework is required to ensure that the right level of funding is provided to those who need it. We agree that the current process for unscheduled assessments needs to be refined to avoid rampant misuse by bad actors posing as providers. We agree that funding should be provided only for the impairment for which an individual is accessing the NDIS. We agree that a tighter plan renewal process will assist with the redistribution of unspent funds to those in need. We agree that records must be kept by both the provider and the participant for the services that are being claimed. This change is vital to assist in fraud identification. The 90-day claim period will also assist with this. And we agree that imposing mandatory registration requirements for providers delivering supports to participants who are most at risk of abuse or exploitation is a critical step in stamping out bad actors within the system and protecting vulnerable recipients and their families.

But we do hold concerns with many elements of this bill. Firstly, and most predominantly, we don't believe that this bill goes far enough to acknowledge and stamp out fraud and remove bad actors. It is concerning that both the government and the National Disability Insurance Agency have been unable to quantify the scale of fraud currently suspected in the system or, at least, unwilling to publicly disclose this information—though it's interesting that the NDIA Fraud Fusion Taskforce estimates that up to 10 per cent of all NDIS claims are inappropriate, mischievous or outright criminal. When you look at 10 per cent of $70 billion, that's a $7 billion hole of taxpayer money.

It's a depressing fact that, for every positive success story my office receives, we get two that are negative. These range from evidence of rampant overcharging for disability aid installations to stories of unregistered carers charging extraordinary fees to the system for social services—when they are, in fact, not providing any services at all. Then there are the reports of carers taking clients on extended cruise holidays. If I ever hear one more of those stories, it will be too soon.

In regional areas, there's another side of the story, the side that employers looking for staff are telling me every week—that the NDIS is currently the largest snatcher of care industry employees that the regions have ever seen. Nursing, childcare and aged-care employers are all scrambling to find staff as previously loyal employees leave the industry in droves. And why wouldn't they? They can earn twice as much while working half as much, and that's not right. It needs to be addressed immediately with fee caps on individual services. But this bill bizarrely avoids touching this at all. Riley Schafer-Wilson, a director and co-founder of a regional NDIS provider, eloquently put it this way in his submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee: 'This bill attempts to improve sustainability primarily through participant-level restriction while leaving major internal NDIA dysfunction insufficiently resolved. Working across provider operations, regional delivery, carer systems, psychosocial complexity, workforce realities and review pathways, I'm concerned the downstream implementation impacts of this bill are being underestimated. The current system already creates significant administrative burden, workforce strain, review escalation, participation confusion and provider instability.' His concerns are extremely valid.

Only recently we have seen these exact issues play out in the aged-care sector, after the disastrous implementation of untested and ill communicated changes last November. My office has been flooded with urgent requests for help due to these system failures. There are waitlists of over a year for assessments, algorithms that are inflexible and without recourse for amendment and clients in need literally dying before being able to access the necessary levels of care that they are entitled to. In reading portions of the bill, I could predict its future, based on these exact events playing out in real time across our current home-care packages.

In looking for solutions, I found Riley's submission contained many of them for communities like mine in the electorate of Cowper, and I hope that the government will listen to them. They are: (1) do not proceed with the tightened permanence or 'all appropriate treatment' requirements unless bodily autonomy, informed consent and the right to refuse unsafe or inappropriate treatment are clearly protected in the legislation; (2) require assessments to consider evidence from treating professionals, providers, support coordinators, carers and people with direct knowledge of the participants' functioning; (3) do not remove participant choice over support coordination or plan management without strong safeguards for continuity, independence, regional access and conflict management; (4) do not include planned suspension, revocation, automated debt creation, expanded compliance burdens or reduced claim windows without strong review rights, disability adjusted communication requirements and human oversight; (5) publicly report on the outcomes and savings already created by the October 2024 support definition changes and later fraud reforms before introducing further participant level restrictions—this should also include clearer reporting on NDIA delay, complaints, internal review burden, ART legal costs, payment delays, overturned or conceded decisions and downstream administration harm; (6) assess workforce impact, provider viability, thin markets, allied health shortages and participant access barriers in regional communities before implementation; (7) independently assess downstream impacts on hospitals, housing, mental health systems, unpaid carers, workforce participation and regional economies; (8) do not remove children from the NDIS unless alternative systems are already funded, operational, and accessible in practice; (9) require evidence based justification and consultation for price changes and assistive technology or home modification restrictions; and (10) consult directly with disabled people, carers, providers, workers, regional communities and frontline disability services before implementing reform of this scale.

While I wholeheartedly agree with the intentions held within this bill, I do not believe that the bill in its current form is the right way forward, and I hope that these concerns will be effectively addressed. As I said in my introduction, when the right support is delivered at the right time by the right provider, it does more than change lives; it sustains them. These recipients deserve a bill that protects that, and the Australian taxpayer deserves a bill that protects their investment.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The National Disability Insurance Scheme is a source of pride for Australians. It's the embodiment of the great Australian value of the fair go for all. It was put in place by a Labor government 13 years ago to ensure that people living with disabilities in Australia get access to the best quality care and services to ensure that they can participate freely and actively in society and, most importantly, realise their personal potential in their contribution to their families, their communities and Australia.

The original NDIS was based on a Productivity Commission report that recommended the establishment of an insurance scheme in Australia. That original report also recommended three tiers of support. What we've actually delivered is all three tiers, in some forms or respects, being delivered by the Commonwealth, whereas it was envisaged that the first two tiers would be delivered in a partnership with the states, and the Commonwealth would deliver the third tier. What ended up occurring is that the Commonwealth has been delivering all three tiers, and the scheme has become unsustainable.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 gives effect to elements of our plan to restore the NDIS to its original intent of supporting people with permanent and significant disability and to secure the NDIS for future generations. These aren't changes to its purpose but to protect it, to strengthen it and to secure it for future generations who will rely on it long after us. It's changed lives, it's opened doors and it's given people with permanent and significant disability the opportunity to participate fully in their communities. It's one of Australia's most important social programs. It's a national institution built on fairness, dignity and inclusion.

But we also know that the scheme is under real pressure. Costs are rising faster than any other comparable government run program. Too many participants aren't receiving the quality supports that they deserve, and the NDIS, unfortunately, has been a target for shonks and fraudsters who are seeking to exploit vulnerable people and siphon money away from those the scheme was designed to support. The National Disability Insurance Agency's actuary warned that, without change, NDIS spending would blow out by $13 billion over the next four years. Left unchecked, the scheme would not meet the interim eight per cent growth targets for years, let alone the new five to six per cent growth target agreed to by National Cabinet.

Quite simply, the scheme has become unsustainable, and that is why the government is acting now. As the architects of the NDIS, we're determined to act to secure its future, to ensure that it is restored to its original intent, as reflected in that Productivity Commission report. We've already brought growth down from 22 per cent under the previous government to around 10 per cent today. But, even at that level, the scheme is still growing too quickly to remain sustainable. In January 2026, National Cabinet agreed that growth must come down to five to six per cent or lower to protect the scheme for future generations.

Our plan to secure the NDIS rests on four pillars: fighting fraud, slowing rapid cost increases, clearer eligibility requirements and delivering quality services. These pillars guide the legislation that's now before the House. Under this plan, the NDIS will continue to grow every year. It will remain the largest social program in Australia outside the age pension and the centrepiece of the most comprehensive suite of disability supports anywhere in the world. But instead of costing more than $70 billion in 2030, spending is projected to be around $55 billion, a level that keeps the scheme strong and sustainable. The reforms before parliament build on the recommendations of the Independent Review into the NDIS, the disability royal commission and the original Productivity Commission report. All were informed by extensive consultation with people with disability, their families, advocates and service providers. They all point to the same conclusion: the NDIS must return to its original purpose of supporting people with permanent and significant disabilities while ensuring that systems provide other supports where they're designed to deliver those.

A key part of the work is improving access and eligibility. The NDIS review found that the current approach is inconsistent and unfair. Access lists created during the early transition phase have led to decisions based on diagnosis rather than functional capability, and this has allowed people with higher capacity to enter the scheme while others with greater needs have struggled to get consistent decisions. The government's recommending that access lists be removed and that stronger, evidence based assessment processes be introduced. A technical advisory group will advise on thresholds and how we assess a person's ability to do everyday tasks. No change to access will occur before January 2028, which is very important so that people have time to adjust to the changes. Before then, we'll work with the states and territories to ensure that people who are no longer eligible for the NDIS are properly supported outside it through programs run by the states and territories. This includes the development of Foundational Supports, the $6 billion commitment already agreed to by National Cabinet, so that more people can get the right support in the right system.

The reforms also address the rapid growth in participant plans. The bill proposes clearer rules for unscheduled reassessments, measures to reduce planned cost escalation and a reset of budgets for social and community participation. These changes reflect the original intent of the scheme to support genuine inclusion. To rebuild capability in the community, the government will establish a $200 million Inclusive Communities Fund, supporting organisations that create real opportunities for participation.

We're also strengthening the definition of reasonable and necessary supports. Over time, the scope of what the NDIS pays for has expanded beyond what was intended, creating confusion and inconsistency. The reforms will ensure that supports funded by the NDIS are solely related to the impairment for which a person gained access and that the scheme aligns more closely with other social service systems.

Another major focus is market integrity and participant safety. Since 2022, the government has invested more than $550 million to build integrity into the NDIS, including the Fraud Fusion Taskforce, ICT upgrades and the NDIA's payment integrity review workforce. The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Act 2026 introduced tougher penalties and stronger powers for the NDIS commission to deter and to respond to non-compliance, abuse, neglect and harm. But more needs to be done.

The bill before parliament strengthens fraud prevention by improving the quality of plan managers and support coordinators. It expands mandatory provider registrations for high risk supports and requires all providers to enrol in a secure digital payment system. These measures will give the NDIS commission greater visibility of the market, allowing it to act early on high risk practices and remove providers that are doing the wrong thing.

Support coordination will also be reformed. Under the new model, the government will directly commission providers to deliver support coordination and connection services. This will improve quality, reduce conflicts of interest and ensure that participants no longer need to pay for support coordination from their plan budgets. A similar commissioning approach will be used to lift the quality of plan management services, reducing the number of providers from the current 1,400 and ensuring strict standards are met. We'll also undertake targeted consultation on supported independent living commissioning, hearing directly from participants, families, providers and industry representatives. The goal is a sustainable service model that supports innovation, market viability and better outcomes for participants.

Throughout all of this, one principle guides our work: participants with the greatest need will continue to receive critical supports that they require to live well with dignity. These reforms are not about cutting support; they're about ensuring the NDIS remains strong, fair and sustainable so it can keep supporting the people who need it for generations to come.

The NDIS really is a statement of our nation's values. It's a measure of our national character. It's a great embodiment of the great Australian notion of the fair go for all. It's more than a source of support; it's a source of pride for Australia. By acting now, we can safeguard and strengthen the scheme, ensuring it continues to serve Australians, as it was created to help them. This is a moment to reaffirm our shared commitment to protect the NDIS, to strengthen it and to ensure that it remains a foundation for dignity, fairness and opportunity for decades to come.

Ben Small (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Electoral Matters) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The NDIS is heralded as one of Australia's truly great reforms. Perhaps it's just my parochialism as a proud Western Australian, but, of the 4,400-odd folk in Forrest who depend on the NDIS for their independence and, indeed, their way of life, I am yet to meet anyone who contends that outcomes under the NDIS have been more successful than the scheme that existed in Western Australia prior to the introduction of the national scheme. I think this reflects, in no small way, the fact that, so often in government and in politics in this country, outcomes are better where decision-makers are closest to the people that they represent and impact with those decisions.

Notwithstanding that perhaps slightly parochial view, let's consider the NDIS as it stands. I'm not going to come into this chamber today and pretend it has been a glittering success under previous coalition governments and only turned to custard under the Albanese government because, when I was in the other place in this building, one particular example stood out to me. A person who suffered an accident and lost both lower legs was, after 18 months of wrangling, bureaucratic nonsense, red tape, form-filling and endless assessments, awarded under the NDIS funding for one prosthetic leg, which clearly, in the absence of two legs, did not help them live an independent life and enable them to make a contribution to society.

That was a very poor outcome under the previous government, and, unfortunately, through my time campaigning in the seat of Forrest, I've just heard story after story of folks caught up in the attempts to bring this scheme under control. I was doorknocking in the suburb of Treendale, and a police car pulled up next to me. The police officer wound down his window and inquired as to why I was loitering in the front yard of this house. Upon explaining who I was and what I was doing there, the police officer informed me that it was, in fact, his house. He was quite ready to arrest me had I had any sort of ill intent. We went on to discuss matters of the day, and his six-year-old daughter was severely autistic, non-verbal and going through a torrid time with her condition. He had sought, for more than a year, to get a communication device funded under the NDIS. In what in seems to me a very clear case of need, rather than assist that struggling Australian family, the NDIS instead lawyered up with some of the best lawyers in Perth, from a nationally prominent law firm, and put these guys through the wringer. They forced them to go through the ART, where, eventually, after great expense—I say expense not only in the sense of the tens of thousands of dollars they spent in legal fees but also in terms of the emotional and psychological impact on that family, a normal aspirational Australian family—the government and the NDIS were finally forced to give this poor six-year-old girl the communication device that enabled her to get on with life.

I say these things to the House today only to point out that there have been severe failures of this scheme to come good with the promise that it held out for Australians, and that's that it would be a true safety net for our most vulnerable Australians. I think everyone who comes to this place has a responsibility to approach a bill like this with that lens and that understanding. It's not a time to play politics, and unfortunately there has been a strong history of playing politics with this.

I want to go back to the then shadow minister for the NDIS, Bill Shorten. In the lead-up to the 2022 election, he said:

This Government has a problem with the NDIS but they'll never come out and declare it.

… You can't move around the corridors of Parliament in Canberra without tripping over a Coalition Minister whispering the Scheme is unsustainable.

I'm here to tell you today that is a lie.

The final part is a true Bill Shorten zinger. Here we are a couple of years down the track, and I'm listening to a minister in the Albanese government just now tell us that the scheme is unsustainable. It's appalling that it's taken this long to get to the realisation on both sides of the chamber that action is needed. Certainly action is needed to rein in the fraud, the corruption and the organised crime that's prevalent within this scheme, but I also think that action is needed to ensure that it's delivering the outcomes in our communities that it should. Like I said, I keep hearing these stories everywhere I go of the failures of this scheme, which is costing tens of billions of dollars a year and growing at an extraordinary rate, to actually deliver those outcomes in the community.

With that in mind, I think it is very pleasing that the coalition are approaching this with a lens of bipartisan support for important reforms but with some concern and trepidation that the savings from these measures have already been spent. In today's Australian we see that more than the savings from these NDIS changes has already been committed in this budget alone. This is the second in a series of legislative changes that the current government has made in the wake of the 2023 independent review into the NDIS, and it is of great concern to me that already the money's gone.

In April 2023, the Albanese government committed to reducing the annual growth rate of the scheme to eight per cent, and they failed to achieve that target. The minister for health and disability then went on to announce that the government would seek to reduce the annual growth rate of the scheme to between five and six per cent over the medium term. Again, that has not been achieved. Right now the growth rate in the NDIS expenditure is sitting at 10.3 per cent, which means that the proposed two per cent growth rate, which is banked in the budget coming before this House, is not only a serious and substantial reduction but also extremely unlikely to be achieved. That should be of concern to every Australian who's focused on intergenerational fairness. The national credit card is being swiped at an incredible rate, racking up some $256 billion when you include off-budget spending over the forward estimates, yet here we are today with a bill that's claiming to achieve a massive reduction in the expenditure of this program.

The reality within our communities is that those people who rely on these supports are concerned that they will be unfairly victimised by a cost-cutting initiative here in Canberra. We need comfort that those who rely on these support packages for their very way of life—those with substantial, significant and permanent disability—will remain supported and protected by this scheme. I think that, for every coalition speaker I listened to today, that has been front of mind.

When we hear important and reasonable propositions from the government when it comes to access to the scheme, things like ensuring that the scheme allows access for those who need access on the basis of functional assessment rather than simple diagnosis—that sounds to me like an important and sensible sort of reform and something that should be supported. But the problem is always in the detail. The bill is going to change that to reflect their reduced functional capacity, but there are a lot of people in my community right now who are exceptionally worried about whether they themselves—or perhaps a child, family member or a loved one—will still be eligible for support on an ongoing basis through the NDIS. The answer isn't clear, because the bill establishes a legislative mechanism to change the way that a person is assessed for the NDIS but provides no detail on what that assessment process will look like after the passage of this legislation.

It seems to me that the Albanese government has banked the savings. They've spent the savings, but they haven't yet got the detail developed and ready to show the Australian people what this looks like. That is causing a level of fear, anxiety and concern in the community because of the many hundreds of thousands of Australians who legitimately depend on this system. I think that many in the coalition have been calling for the fraud, the corruption and the organised crime elements of the NDIS to be addressed for a long time. The coalition will always seek to support measures that improve the integrity of the NDIS, measures that place safeguards to protect participants and the taxpayer.

At the end of the day, every dollar that is spent by this scheme is a dollar that the Australian public reasonably expects is going to supporting vulnerable Australians. But every day we see reports of fraud, misuse and other frivolous expenditure under the scheme. There are more than 10,000 public servants here in Canberra just within the NDIS, and yet it seems that they cannot use those resources to get on top of these very real expenditure issues. The confidence of the Australian people in the NDIS and indeed the very support for the scheme are dependent on an assurance that those taxpayer funds are actually being spent for legitimate purposes.

In the calendar year of 2025, some $48.8 billion was spent through the NDIS. If you take the Australian National Audit Office's estimate that six to 10 per cent of those claims were noncompliant, fraudulent or otherwise incorrect, we're frittering away some $4.8 billion a year on a scheme. We're taking those billions legitimately from Australians who expect that money is supporting people with disability, and instead it's going into outright fraud, deliberate overservicing, false invoicing or claims for services that were never delivered. It's subject to collusion between providers and participants. Law enforcement agencies have also warned that organised crimes are increasingly targeting the scheme, exploiting weak entry controls and fragmented oversight.

So you'd think that a focus of a bill like this that seeks to drastically curtail the growth in the expenditure of the NDIS would be ensuring that integrity systems are absolutely robust. Every dollar that is lost to fraud through this sort of leakage is a dollar taken away from Australians with a disability, those same Australians in my own community that are being denied the supports they deserve and being forced through the courts to get those supports. I just don't see that we've got far enough in this legislation towards addressing that.

The NDIS is drifting under this poor stewardship that, we have to accept, has been provided by both sides of the chamber over the 13-odd years since the NDIS was introduced. It's absolutely unacceptable, because to lose confidence in this scheme ultimately risks those people who depend on it for their independence and for making a contribution to our community—which was the whole point of it. That was the compact that the Australian people, through successive governments, entered into for a scheme that is spending some $50-odd billion a year now and growing at 10.3 per cent. That is the difference between what Australians thought they were signing up for—those Australians who have very happily accepted this through their taxes every year, as a significant impost on the Commonwealth—and the experience of the people that should be receiving the services.

In the absence of a truly great scheme, like we had in WA before the introduction of the NDIS, we should be focused on making this scheme the best possible scheme for those that depend on it. Some elements of this bill, as other speakers on both sides of the chamber have touched on, go some way to addressing it. Do they go far enough? No. Do they give those Australians who depend on the scheme comfort that they won't be victimised and targeted just for the sake of realising the aggressive cost savings the government proposes? No—and that's our concern.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Many people have spoken on this NDIS bill, the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, so I don't want to go into the tiny details of the bill. This is a very personal speech I'm going to give today.

I pay credit to the families and the kids with disability that I've looked after over the last 50 years. It is very personal to me. I remember them all, including many who've passed away. I pay credit to my secretary and office manager, Cheryl Roberts, who worked for me for over 35 years, for the care she gave to her daughter Stacey, who had severe disability. Unfortunately, Stacey passed away in her 20s, not so long ago. I pay tribute to Cheryl and her husband, Dwayne, who looked after Stacey so well and helped her survive for so many years.

I pay credit to the families of kids like Rebecca, Trevor, Troy, Michael, Hamish, Sydney, Harry and Harrison, and the unpaid carers, for what they did to help their kids and to care for their kids—many of them now adults who are doing well thanks to the NDIS. I pay credit to Bill Shorten and, of course, Julia Gillard, who first developed the concept of the NDIS. I remember speaking to Julia Gillard, long before she was prime minister, at a fundraiser for my good friend Chris Hayes, where we spoke about the importance of supporting people with severe disability and their families.

I pay credit to my paediatric colleagues, particularly the people I worked with closely in south Western Sydney—Rick Dunstan, who, unfortunately, has passed away; Andrew McDonald; John Whitehall; Raymond Chin; Melvyn Polon; Mark Westphalen—all of whom gave care to people and their kids with disability over many, many years. You get bonded to those families and you want what's best for them. It's a great privilege to have worked with those people and to have contact with those families that have done so well and provided so much care for their kids and their families.

I pay credit to all the allied health people that provided support for those kids. I want to pay credit to the people who ran intervention services. In particular, I'd like to mention Lorraine Brown, who ran Starting Points Macarthur, which was an early intervention preschool for kids with moderate to severe disability.

I acknowledge that we have created some anxiety in what we are doing now as a federal government to try and make sure that the NDIS is sustainable for the future. I want to pay credit to all in this parliament who support the NDIS, and I include many people in the opposition and crossbench ranks. I know that what we want is to have a system that works well for people with disability. I'm a strong believer in the NDIS and its role as one of the most important social reforms we've ever had in modern Australia.

I'd like to take you through a bit of pre-NDIS history from my own experience as a very young medical student in 1972. I had an uncle who was a paediatrician. His name was John Davis, but everyone called him Tubby. Tubby Davis, a great man who is no longer with us, did a lot to help and to mentor me. I remember doing a ward round with him when I was a medical student, and we saw a little girl with Down syndrome, and her parents were very, very anxious. She'd been quite sick in hospital following complications from cardiac surgery, and she was recovering. I remember Tubby took me, a couple of other medical students, the resident, the registrar and a couple of the nursing staff into the side room of the department of paediatrics of the old North Shore Hospital, and he said to me in front of everyone, 'What do you think these parents are most worried about?' Obviously, at that stage, their worry was for her to get over this cardiac surgery and get over the complications, and when she could go home, and that's exactly what I said. Tubby said, 'Well, that might be the immediate worry, but what these parents are worried about is what's going to happen to their child when they pass away, when they're no longer there to help her.' That was a very, very important lesson to me.

Throughout my career in dealing with children with disability, that was the very thing that always worried the parents—what was going to happen to their child that they'd cared for and nurtured throughout their childhood years when they were no longer there to help them. It didn't matter what problem the child had, what physical disability, what intellectual disability or what illness. Those parents always worried about what would happen to their child when they could no longer look after them. Often that meant institutionalisation.

There were institutions around the country that cared for people with long-term disability. The old Callan Park, which was an institution for those with mental illness, and often became a de facto home for people with intellectual disability when their parents could no longer care for them. There was Grosvenor Hospital at Ashfield in Sydney. There was Peat Island near Gosford, which I remember going to as a paediatric registrar. People with severe disability were managed and housed there when their parents were no longer with them. Thankfully, we no longer have those institutions. We now have group homes. We have fantastic ways of keeping people in their own independent living spaces, which has allowed us to do away with many of these institutions. That's a great thing, and that's thanks to the NDIS.

It was a very important lesson for me, as I've said. It doesn't matter what the problem was, what physical or intellectual disability, the parents always worried about what would happen to their child when they could no longer look after them. I saw parents go through incredible difficulties, trying to put money aside so that their child could be looked after when they were either too infirm to look after them, or, in fact, had passed away.

I can remember many others. Troy, a little boy I saw with Down syndrome when he was born, developed something called Eisenmenger complex, which is an inoperable heart condition. I watched him grow and develop. I watched his family look after him so, so well. His father died, and his mother was left to bring Troy up and care for him in his 20s, 30s and now in his 40s. Unfortunately, his mother has passed away, and he's now cared for by his sister. The NDIS has made all that possible and has allowed that family to keep Troy at home all that time.

I remember Justin with cerebral palsy. He was not mobile. He couldn't speak. But, with the use of a computer and a voice activator, he was able to communicate. In fact, he was very bright, but he clearly needed care all his life. His mum really worried about what would happen to him when she passed on, and now we know, with the NDIS, he will get support.

These are the faces and the stories that give us the human perspective on the importance of the NDIS and this bill. This bill is about securing the future of the NDIS so that Australians with significant disability have a future with an institution they can trust and rely on for support for the rest of their lives. I had, as I said, a conversation about this with former prime minister Julia Gillard around 2008, at a meeting with the then member for Werriwa, Chris Hayes, and she understood well the importance of the NDIS being sustainable for the future. Whilst the NDIS is a Labor initiative—and it's thanks to Julia Gillard and, later, Bill Shorten—I know that many on the opposition benches have supported it and continue to support it, and it is very important that it is bipartisan.

However, there was a significant problem when the NDIS was first started, and the foundations have been a little shaky. We need to reinforce the foundations of the NDIS. It's important for people with severe disability, and it's important for the whole country. We need to make sure that people with disability are included, are supported and know with confidence that their future is assured.

As an MP now, and in working with the Minister for Disability and the National Disability Insurance Scheme, I'm absolutely committed to securing the future of the NDIS. This bill consists of five schedules that will make this happen, including schedule 1, which sets out the changes to access and eligibility as well as plan management for participants. This follows findings from the NDIS review that the current approach to accessing the scheme is inconsistent and inequitable. It found that the scheme is missing people with disability who require the most support. In particular, I'd like to mention that children that have significant disability and live in rural and regional areas are missing out on supports; children with, for example, fetal alcohol syndrome are missing out on supports in some of our Indigenous communities; and people who have disability but don't have people who are able to advocate for them are often missing out on the levels of support that they need. We need to make sure the NDIS can retain its original intent of supporting people with permanent and significant disability, as was modelled by the Productivity Commission.

The bill seeks to address inequity of access by clarifying the meaning of 'functional capacity' and providing the assessment of thresholds of that functional capacity. It does worry me a little that we are looking at developing a single assessment tool. I am concerned about that. I'm not sure that that will be able to deal with the nuances of the psychosocial supports that are needed and of the community supports that are needed in thin markets in rural, regional and remote areas. So I do have concerns about that. I am confident that the scheme, over time, will be able to deal with these nuances as the new system is rolled out and the Thriving Kids initiative does progress.

Schedule 1 will also enable the minister to make determinations to reset funding for groups of supports like social, community and civic participation and capacity building. This is important because capacity building has been a really important part of the NDIS, and it must be continued and must have transparency and oversight. It's an area where I think there have been some mentions of fraudulent activity occurring, and it's very important that the minister is able to have oversight of that. It's resulted, of course, in the scheme growing too fast, and it means that billions of dollars have been spent on non-evidenced policy and in areas where providers have not provided the care that they should have. If left unchecked, this would skyrocket costs and would not be a benefit to the community and the individual participants.

The National Disability Insurance Agency will have strengthened powers to effectively manage the integrity of the NDIS and to build on existing fraud measures we've introduced since coming into government. We must remember that the NDIS was always intended to be reviewed over time and that improvements can continue to be made. One of the important aspects that we haven't spoken a lot about but is very important is training assessors and making sure that people who are doing the initial assessments are well trained and able to deal with the many, many different presentations of disability and the nuances of that.

It's also important to me that the biggest threats are cost blow-outs, where the scheme could become unsustainable, and it is very important that we make sure that the policies we use are very evidence based and sustainable. Allied health is one issue where we know that, particularly for very young children, very transactional models of care are not necessarily the best practice. I go back to the starting points I spoke about. There are many examples around the country where group therapy and parents supporting other parents can be the most effective ways of getting input for kids with disability and developmental delays.

Currently, only one in 16 providers is registered. 'NDIS provider' can mean anything and is far too broad without proper oversight. It is important that groups are NDIS registered, so there's oversight. It's also important that we look at ways of registering providers such as single providers in a sustainable and affordable way. There needs to be different levels of registration and different costs associated with that.

Schedule 3, based on advice received by the NDIS review that NDIS pricing is not always transparent and we need to make sure that pricing is transparent and sustainable, will establish a clearer and more transparent pricing mechanism. The minister will then set maximum prices for NDIS supports. That's important. Schedule 5 deals with transitional matters relevant to the entirety of the bill. The minister said, 'Within 13 years, the scheme has gone from a dream of generations of activists to a deeply cherished institution,' and I want to make sure it's sustainable. Thank you.

Phillip Thompson (Herbert, Liberal National Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No-one's loved one should feel like an inconvenient dollar figure on any government's budget bottom line. No-one should be worried about treatments being cut or stopped to their children and to their loved ones. Sadly, over the last few months, this is what has occurred. In the electorate of Townsville, there is a school called AEIOU. That school is a specialty school for children with autism. They provide therapeutic services. They provide supports. The children are there for the whole school period, the whole school day. During that day, these children would be able to rock up and get the food therapy that they may need, get the behavioural support, get the OT support, get all of these supports that were then covered by the NDIS. Sadly, AEIOU in Townsville and around the country—those places have now closed. What happens to the young people who need those supports? You regress if you don't get to see your specialists. Children need early intervention so they can get that support now and get the treatment and help that they need so that they can have a functioning life and have a normal life.

AEIOU's doors were open one day, and then, in the afternoon, they told the parents, 'Starting tomorrow, there is no more AEIOU.' So parents that were working, contributing to the economy, whether they were a nurse, an accountant or a soldier, now have to pause their employment and rush to find specialists for their children. We've heard people talk about how it's hard to get a specialist or hard to get treatment for children on the NDIS in the city. Times that by 100, and that's what it feels like in the regions. So there's no availability for occupational therapy, behavioural support or physiotherapy without waitlists going well into the 12-month mark. And still, to this day, many of those parents have had to resign from their employment and can't find a place to get treatment for their children, with many talking about leaving Townsville and moving to a capital city. Townsville is the largest city the furthest away from a capital city. It's the capital of northern Australia, and we don't have enough of these supports there. It breaks my heart. I do support the NDIS, but I support it in a way that provides the care, treatment and support for those that need it, not a way that props up the bank balance of criminals and not a way that allows people to run a business for accommodation, where people will live, and, when found to have done the wrong thing, phoenix that business—the owners of the company travel overseas, come back and start another company doing the same thing. That's who we need to be going after, not cutting services.

If people think that services aren't being cut, you're wrong. I know this firsthand because Emery, my daughter, has level 3 autism and needs support and love. Without early intervention, she would still be non-verbal; she wouldn't be able to talk. But, with early intervention at AEIOU with Autism Queensland, now she can say, 'I love you, Dad.' That's what early intervention can do. That's what the NDIS can do. But my daughter's plan has changed, has not been updated and has been cut. I'm very lucky to be in a fortunate position to be able to fund that extra support—what she's not getting through the NDIS.

But, if you put a review in, you'll wait 12 months. What happens in 12 months for a child that needs the early intervention now? They get worse; they regress. This is what's happening around the country. This is what's happening throughout all of our communities. I know how much and how important these supports are for our children; I really do. My daughter isn't the only one that needs the support, the help, the love, the care and that extra professional support that she gets from a specialist but, because she's had that, she's gone from being non-verbal to counting to 100, to go from January to December and to go up to her sister and say, 'Hug, please.' This is what early intervention does, and this is why we must be ultra-laser-focused when we talk about the NDIS.

My daughter and daughters and sons around the country are not inconvenient dollar figures. They're not. They're people, people that will grow, will laugh and will love, but they need the early interventions. It makes me nervous when we hear people who say, 'Well, there's going to be this thing called Thriving Kids.' We don't know what that is yet, we don't know where it's up to properly, and it's not been rolled out, but supports like AEIOU and like Autism Queensland are all being changed, having funding reduced or having had to close. There's no stopgap in between. There's no support for our children in between when these have stopped and now.

I'm doing my best to be as bipartisan as possible, but the minister said, 'They can just call up the NDIS, and we'll find somewhere.' That's not how it works. You can't just call up the NDIS and say, 'We need a provider.' You can't call the NDIS; you have to go through your case coordinators and your case managers, then they'll get back to you via email. Then, several months has gone past, therapies have slowed down, and children regress. Early intervention is how people live a normal life. I've seen it firsthand; I've seen it with my daughter. She is going to thrive, she is going to kick arse, and she is going to live a great life because she has a loving family and she gets the supports that she needs. I am terrified for those that may not be able to get the supports they need for their children. I'm terrified of what happens if they regress because early intervention will turn into a postvention, and this will be ongoing.

People talk about the cost. I can't put a dollar figure on my daughter saying, 'I love you, Dad.' I can't and I won't, and I refuse to allow the parliament or anywhere else to put a dollar figure on supports for our children. I know that reforms are always good, that change is fine and that we need to work together, but we must communicate it to the communities. We must let the people know what we're doing. We must make sure that when there are changes or different programs that are coming up there isn't a gap in service and there isn't an unknown, where people can't get the support or the help that they need. We must be ultraclear on what we're doing. Everything should be focused on the information that we've been given from the participants and the families, because no good ideas come from politicians—not one. I haven't seen one yet. Good ideas come from the community and the people on the ground, and our job is to work with them to make sure that we can put the framework up and that it can work. If you allow politicians to make up the idea and solution for you, you will be upset. Our job is to listen, work and deliver. That's what we do in this place.

I honestly believe that every politician, regardless of shirt colour, wants the same thing here. We want to get to a point where people on the NDIS get all the support that they need—as well as love, care and everything—whilst we rein in the rorts that are ripping off the taxpayer and robbing our children of treatment. We all want to get there. Some of us might have a different way to get there, but I know that that's where we all want to be. I do not want to be hearing, 'It's a bit hard to go after the criminals.' It's not hard. Let's work together and do it. If it costs money to go after criminals to make sure they're not ripping off the taxpayer and robbing the people that need the treatment, I'm all for it, because in the long-term these people will be out of the disability sector, and then we're not focused on trying to wind in, shorten or make any negative changes to those that need the treatment.

There is always going to be good and bad, and there are going to be mistakes. A friend of mine is missing his leg. Up until recently, every year, he had to send a report to the NDIS that said that his leg hadn't grown back. That is silly and a failure, but it happens. How much does it cost to get the reports done? First, you've got to go to your GP, then your GP has to refer you to your specialist. Your specialist then has to write the report, and then the report gets sent. We're talking thousands of dollars here. This is one person in Townsville. Let's say that there are four people in Townsville. Let's say that there's a person with a spinal injury who is in a chair, and they have to be in a chair full-time. Do they have to do it? I would say that maybe some would have to go down a similar route. They're not going to wake up in the morning and stand just like my friend's not going to wake up in the morning and see a foot has grown back. It doesn't happen. So these are places where we can streamline and make sure that those cost savings are on the red tape that we can cut. Let's get rid of it; we don't need that. You've got one leg; guess what? You're always going to have one leg. You've got no legs? Sorry, they're not growing back. We know that's a fact, so they don't need to prove that year on year.

When it comes to getting a wheelchair, accessories or anything you need to be able to live your life that also shouldn't be a paperwork burden or anything like that. If you have limb loss, you will probably need a wheelchair at some stage. You don't have to get a report to say that; we know that. This is a commonsense approach. I also think there should be some parliamentary scrutiny when we're talking about anything that's automated. If your plan gets put forward and it says what's happening in your life and what you need from the NDIS, then it somehow does an algorithm and says it's similar to someone else's, so the computer says you don't need it, and then you've got to go through the fight, there must be some sort of human oversight. I think that's probably a good part because you don't want things to take so long.

My daughter, when she was young, got diagnosed with autism. There's more that happens then. It's not just the diagnosis—she has autism—and getting treatment. She had a sequela illness called pica. Pica is low iron. She would eat dirt, and I'd never seen this before. I'd never heard of it before. We went around in circles to try and get—

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's Latin for magpie.

Phillip Thompson (Herbert, Liberal National Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And it's Latin for magpie. We went around in circles trying to figure it out, and then one doctor said, 'Just do a blood test.' We did the blood test. It came back—nearly no iron. They called an ambulance and said: 'Your daughter has no iron. She's trying to find iron in a book, in paper, in dirt—anywhere she can.' I get nervous when we hear things like, 'When you get your diagnosis, it's going to be hard to do the review or get sequela illnesses added to it.' That makes me scared because, if we didn't know this, then the Pica wouldn't have been diagnosed and we wouldn't have been able to get the food therapy and all the other things that come with it. I use my daughter as an example because she's one person out of the more than 700,000 people that are on the NDIS right now.

We all have different stories, different thoughts, but we all just want the same thing: the treatment for our loved ones, the support for the people that need it, and to make sure that those that are ripping off the taxpayers that are here today and robbing the people with disabilities get the punishments that they deserve. I'll always stand in support of the NDIS, and I'll work with the government to make sure that we are looking after our most vulnerable—people like my daughter.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Herbert, and I call the member for Cunningham.

Alison Byrnes (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker, and I would also like to thank you for all of the work that you have done over so many years for children with disabilities, including for my friend Vicki and her beautiful daughter, Melissa, who is now 37 years old. Can you believe it?

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It makes me feel old!

Alison Byrnes (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It does indeed! I rise today in support of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. Labor created the NDIS. This was nation-building reform. It was essential for the community, and it had strong community support. We are incredibly proud of the NDIS and its intentions, and we are determined to secure its future and cement the community support that people with disability deserve. I have a long history of advocating hard for the rights of people with disability in our community for over three decades and ensuring that they have a voice at the very highest levels. I've seen what happens when that support is not adequate or is not properly targeted, and I know how important it is for this to be right.

The NDIS is an essential part of Australia's support system for people with permanent and significant disability, and it is another global example set by Labor governments. It exists to help participants live with dignity, with choice and with independence, and that commitment remains unchanged. However, we need to strengthen the scheme so it keeps working well into the future. If we do nothing, NDIS spending is expected to blow out by $13 billion over the next four years. What this will mean in the long term is that the NDIS will lose community support and confidence, and it just won't be there for future generations. This is not an outcome that we will accept. The NDIS is far too important and has far too profound an impact on the lives of those who need it.

This bill aims to return the NDIS to its original intent: supporting people with permanent and significant disability and securing it for future generations. In the Illawarra, we are so very fortunate to have a strong disability sector with many passionate advocates who I engage with regularly, particularly through the Illawarra Disability Alliance, through occupational therapists and physiotherapists, as well as a range of individual providers. I have listened when providers have raised concerns with me, and I have ensured that these local, experienced voices are heard by the relevant policymakers. I have facilitated a number of roundtable discussions between those experienced advocates, the Minister for the NDIS and the NDIA, and I thank all of the parties for their engagement in good faith during these discussions. I want to make sure that local, experienced and dedicated advocates can convey advice on our region's experiences as we work through these important reforms, and I will continue to do so. Like me, the Illawarra Disability Alliance member providers are passionate advocates for people with disability. They have hundreds of years of experience caring for people in our community between them and a strong reputation for providing quality care.

As the Minister for Disability and the NDIS said, the NDIS is a statement of our national values and a source of pride for so many in our community, including me. It is the most comprehensive support package for people with disability in the world. The vulnerabilities that we have seen in the system through shonky providers and the many stories I hear of people who can't get the support they need undermine the scheme as a whole. They call for urgent and comprehensive action. It is simply horrifying to think that bad actors and organised crime have targeted vulnerable people accessing the NDIS. Scammers are seeing opportunity in those who can least afford to lose out. Participants are doing absolutely everything right and being taken advantage of. It has to stop because not only is it leading to poor outcomes for the innocent individuals that are being targeted; it is also demonstrating a low level of care and it is undermining the community's support. When six in 10 people say that this crucial program is broken, something must be done.

The reforms in this bill are focused on four key areas: stopping fraud and rorts, slowing unsustainable cost growth, making eligibility decisions clearer and fairer, and improving the quality and safety of services for participants. The independent review into the NDIS, the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability and the original Productivity Commission report were all informed by extensive consultation with the disability community and sector. Our reforms are building on the recommendations of these reports to create a stronger and more secure NDIS.

The 2023 NDIS review recommended 'a fairer and more consistent participant pathway', including the introduction of 'a more consistent and robust approach to determining eligibility for access to the NDIS based on transparent methods for assessing functional capacity'. That's what this bill aims to achieve. The review found that the eligibility process was inconsistent and unfair. Under the changes, we will establish a technical advisory group, agreed with the states and territories, to define 'functional capacity' and advise on the thresholds for how we assess a person's ability to do everyday tasks. It will clarify permanence and eligibility requirements where someone is or could be accessing supports from other service systems. People with the greatest need will keep getting the critical supports they need to live well and with dignity.

We will work with people with disability, families and experts to make NDIS decisions clearer and more consistent. This includes using evidence based approaches that look at a person's functional needs and not just a diagnosis, and providing clearer guidance about what supports are considered reasonable and necessary. What we expect is that, over time, people with a high capacity to undertake everyday tasks, people with treatable conditions or people who might be getting support from other systems will be supported to find other more suitable services. Essential supports for daily living, personal care and safety remain the priority.

It is important to understand that none of this will happen until January 2028, when we have had time to consult and to gather advice from the technical advisory group and the states and territories. This will give us the time to ensure that those who might no longer be eligible for the NDIS are properly supported. I do want to stress that, under this plan, funding for the NDIS will grow every year. It will still be the largest social program in Australia outside of the age pension and the centre of the most comprehensive suite of supports for people with disability in the world.

The fact is that rules around 'reasonable and necessary' supports have been unclear and have led to a steady expansion of what the NDIS pays for. The volume of NDIS funded supports doesn't align with other parts of the care economy and risks undermining public confidence in the scheme, as well as blowing out costs. The changes in this bill more clearly require supports to be directly related to eligible impairments and amends the definition of reasonable and necessary supports.

We want to help people with disability to genuinely participate in the community, but the community participation supports are simply not delivering in the way they should. The quality supports that were there before the NDIS was introduced have withered away, leaving the NDIS to fill the gaps. These programs are not delivering connection, and they don't show respect and dignity to participants and are creating safety risks to already vulnerable individuals. It is expensive, it is not working and it is eroding the public's confidence. The cost of this stream has tripled in the last five years to $12 billion, about the same in net terms as the PBS.

The first recommendation of the NDIS review was to 'invest in foundational supports to bring fairness, balance and sustainability to the ecosystem supporting people with disability'. So we will invest in community based options so people can access the right supports, including outside the NDIS where appropriate. We've made a $6 billion commitment through National Cabinet to get the right foundational supports outside the scheme, and we're delivering a $200 million Inclusive Communities Fund to help community organisations deliver meaningful participation opportunities. It will be open to mainstream and disability organisations with details to be settled in consultation with the disability community. These changes are on top of our $4 billion joint investment in Thriving Kids, which will begin rolling out in October. We'll keep working closely with state and territory governments to develop a threshold and process for determining who should fall under the Thriving Kids program to ensure impacted children get the support that they need.

Crucially, this bill will crack down on the absolutely unconscionable fraud that is rife throughout the scheme. It is absolutely appalling and horrifying to know that organised crime and people looking to rort the system have targeted a scheme like the NDIS. It's worse than appalling, and it must be stopped. There are legitimate reasons for some providers not to require registration. I understand there are some industries like physiotherapy and occupational therapy, for example, that are already very heavily regulated by their own bodies. But these circumstances are limited to those with established and respected bodies of oversight. If you're providing services to vulnerable people, particularly behind closed doors, you must be regulated to reduce risk to those participants.

Under this bill, all providers of high risk NDIS supports like personal care and daily living support will need to be registered. Participants deserve to have confidence that the organisations they have chosen can actually deliver the support that they need. It will also help the government to keep participants safe from harm and exploitation. We should not be seeing abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence from providers who are being paid to deliver dignity and care to vulnerable people. Greater oversight means the NDIS commission can act swiftly to remove providers doing the wrong thing and will lift the overall quality of the market. There will also be new evidence thresholds for all claims, and we will directly commission providers to deliver a new support coordination and connection service. This will mean participants won't have to pay for this out of their budgets. It will provide the government with oversight and control of service quality and deliver a more efficient service.

This bill will give the NDIA the necessary powers to provide stronger safeguards for participants and improve the integrity of the scheme overall. First of their kind protections will be established when regulatory action is taken, and the changes will ensure evidence provided by participants can be used as part of investigations. People with disability deserve to be protected against bad actors in the strongest terms.

One of the last parts of the changes of this bill that I want to touch on is the shift from the NDIA as decision-makers on pricing to the Minister for Disability and the NDIS. The outcry and upset that I have heard from my local providers on the unaccountable way the NDIA made the last round of pricing decisions was simply unacceptable. It wasn't transparent. Providers were not meaningfully consulted, and the NDIA has not been open enough about explaining these decisions. I strongly believe that the government should ultimately be responsible for decisions like this. That's what we are elected for, and the public will hold us accountable for these decisions, regardless of whether they were made by the minister, as they should.

Finally, I understand that when change is proposed it can be incredibly scary for NDIS participants and their families. We need to ensure that they are consulted, that they are understood and that they are brought on this journey with us. These are people who have had a tough enough time, and I don't want to see these changes bringing more hurt, confusion and anxiety into their lives unnecessarily. What I have seen over the past decade, though, has often been inhumane—people with profound disability having to fight the NDIA too hard to get a good outcome. We must make this easier for the people who depend on it. We must ensure that the NDIA acts with empathy and treats participants with respect, and that processes are clear, defined and efficient.

The agency must work with our good-quality providers to make the system the very best it can be. My office has represented hundreds of people fighting to get good outcomes. It has been frustrating and time-consuming, and it is quite often distressing—and not just for participants but for my staff and I as well. By the time participants come to my office, they have fought, sometimes, for months, and they are at their wit's end and they are distressed. My staff and I care deeply about our community, and having to fight so hard because processes are not clear, defined or efficient is just not right. It's my staff and I who are on the phone or face-to-face with these participants in distress while we work to get them support through a system that should be much more manageable and efficient for everyone.

As a government, we must make this better. We must make sure guidelines and processes are clear, defined and efficient. But this must be combined with empathy and respect. I give my absolute commitment that I will work to have our local voices heard and to ensure concerns from people in our community are conveyed at the highest level. I will fight hard to ensure we get this right, and I truly believe the only way we can, and will, do this is by working with quality providers and with our community, with the expertise and experience in and around this system.

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Cunningham on her speech and intent. We all, no matter which side of the chamber we are on, want to see better outcomes for those who are living with disability and significant disability.

The coalition supports the NDIS. We support its original intent. We support Australians living with significant and permanent disability having dignity, independence and choice. But if the scheme is to survive it must be sustainable, be accountable and work for the people it was created to serve. Right now, it does not. There are 5,962 NDIS participants in Mallee—thousands of people across Mildura, Swan Hill, Kerang, Cohuna, Horsham and Stawell whose daily lives rely on this parliament getting it right.

As I have said publicly, the NDIS must support those who truly need it, but right now it is not working as it should. We know there is fraud. We know money is being wasted. We know some providers are gaming the system. Yet people living with severe disability are still missing out. Families are still battling the system and participants are still left anxious about whether the supports they rely on now will continue.

Let me be clear: the spending must be reined in. But fixing the NDIS cannot mean making genuine and vulnerable participants pay for the failures of the system and the government in charge. Broad, blunt measures must not hurt the innocent while the guilty continue to exploit the gaps.

In regional Australia, people are anxious because the workforce is already thin and they still do not know who loses and who stays, and whether regional Australians will once again be left behind. People come to my office in desperation because the system is hard, with delays, contradictory advice and decisions that lack transparency and/or are regularly overturned on appeal. For regional Australians there is an added reality. Even when an NDIS plan exists, there may be no provider available locally to deliver it. As shadow minister for regional health, I know that one of the most serious issues facing the NDIS today across all forms of health care in the regions is workforce. In regional Australia, workforce shortages are real. Recruitment is difficult. Retention is difficult. Distances are large. Workers in sometimes complex situations are doing work far beyond what the system properly recognises or funds. This is particularly true in supported independent living.

Tony Dunne, a local disability manager, has been clear that the NDIS is not yet mature enough to fully replace the funding previously provided by the Victorian government. He warned that, as that funding disappears, those clients with often severe disability who share a home are left homeless. Providers are left exposed, workers begin to leave, and the whole system drifts towards instability. Tony also says that, if staff cannot maintain their income, they will leave the sector and take skill and experience with them. In many SIL, supported independent living, settings, especially in regional areas, staff are delivering high-intensity support, medical support, behavioural support and complex daily care. If the funding model does not reflect that reality, the workforce will not hold, and if the workforce does not hold, participants will absolutely pay the price.

I have already raised in this House the case of Noreen, a constituent in her mid 80s whose adult son lives in supported independent living accommodation in my electorate. I've said publicly that Noreen's son Peter, who is in his late 50s, faces eviction because short-term Victorian funding the Andrews government hoped was transitional is now ending and the NDIS isn't picking up the bill for his care in a supported independent living home. This is a serious human consequence of politicking—ageing parents are wondering what happens when they are no longer there. I cannot even imagine the stress.

A Sunraysia mother recently approached me about her 18-year-old son with significant intellectual disability, hearing impairment, severe epilepsy, complex medical needs and behaviours of concern. He is non-verbal. He cannot advocate for himself. His mother is terrified after an NDIA decision which requires him to move into a supported independent living arrangement where, for much of the day, support would be delivered at a one-to-three ratio. But her son requires one-to-one support. He is an absconding risk, with unpredictable seizures and falls, and relies on people who know him well enough to detect subtle signs of distress or deterioration. This mother rightly fears that, in a shared arrangement of one to three, those signs will be missed. This same mother told me that the NDIA's approach feels like a step backwards towards the kind of institutional models the disability sector has worked so hard to leave behind. That should concern every member of this House, and I'm sure that it does. Choice and control must mean something real for people with the highest needs. It must be co-designed with them, not just those with the simplest plans or the strongest voices.

There is also another crossover problem that families in Western Victoria are confronting: the clash between disability support and aged care. Kerry wrote about her sister, who had been trying to transition into aged-care accommodation in Stawell. Due to delays in NDIS assessment, the transition window was missed. Kerry's sister's health deteriorated, and this included a hospitalisation following a stroke presentation. What followed was a cycle of hospital stays, assessments and meetings with no clear resolution. She said she felt she had exhausted every avenue.

There is also a second major issue we must face: rorting and lack of oversight. Ninety-four per cent of providers currently in the NDIS are not registered. That is not sustainable. Local workers tell me some providers inflate costs, some charge excessive travel and some deliver services that simply do not justify the price. An experienced local plan manager wrote to me saying her team manages around 820 participants, carefully scrutinises invoices, reports dodgy providers and often sees little visible action after those reports are made. She said clearly that all providers should be registered and audited regularly. Let me say this clearly. I believe every provider should be registered. If public money is being spent and if vulnerable Australians are involved, there must be proper oversight and proper accountability. This cannot be done in a way that disrupts the current and excellent care providers are delivering.

One Mildura constituent who I think is watching right now, Chris Riordan, who has lived with cerebral palsy all his life, told me he is feeling very stressed about Labor's NDIS plans. Chris understands that changes need to happen, but he's worried about losing his carers, his regular daily visits and personal care—the life he has established through the NDIS. Chris told me some of his current carers are not registered providers, and he's concerned that the system will take them away from him. Chris says the registration process needs to be simpler and more affordable so that good providers can stay in the system while the poor ones are pushed out. We need to eliminate low-value, inappropriate and exploitative services while keeping the people who are doing the right thing, because, for participants, continuity of care matters, trust matters and relationships matter. We cannot design a system that breaks those things in the name of reform. I want to give a shout-out to Chris because he is an extraordinary man bound to a wheelchair. He's in his 50s, he has worked all of his life and he even owns his own home. He is an amazing person who is very popular around Mildura. Hello, Chris.

We cannot design a system that breaks those things in the name of reform. We cannot answer fraud by punishing participants. One constituent from Cohuna warned that people with disability must not become 'collateral damage for the failures of the system'. That is exactly right. If support is taken away from those who genuinely need it, those needs do not disappear. They shift to hospitals, to emergency departments, to mental health services and to families already stretched to breaking point. Raymond's parents, from Swan Hill, wrote to me that many people with disability cannot speak up for themselves and rely on others to defend their dignity and quality of care. They asked whether we are returning to the days of people being out of sight and out of mind. I certainly trust not.

So why are we in this NDIS mess of skyrocketing demand? Research shows that introduction of the NDIS led to a 32 per cent increase in reported autism prevalence and accounted for 47 per cent of new diagnoses since the scheme began. Autism is now the fastest growing cohort in the scheme, and nearly four in five new entrants are on the autism spectrum.

We also cannot ignore the impact of the pandemic, particularly in Daniel Andrews's lockdown capital of the world, Victoria. The pandemic's period worsened developmental vulnerability, mental health and support needs in many children, and that added pressure to already stretched systems. The Australian Early Development Census said:

… the pandemic … had profoundly disruptive indirect effects on children's lives—

and the 2021 data showed higher developmental vulnerability on some domains in the previous years. Murdoch Children's Research Institute said the indirect impacts of the pandemic on children and adolescents were as substantial, if not more substantial, than the direct effects of COVID-19 infection and reported:

… mental health difficulties, and physical health problems … increased across the 2020-2021 lockdown period in Victoria.

The Royal Children's Hospital National Child Health Poll found:

Compared to before the pandemic, overall mental health was more of a problem for 41 per cent of children, anxiety more of a problem for 36 per cent, and connections and relationships more of a problem for 43 per cent of children.

It also found that 49 per cent of children had difficulty adjusting back to school onsite and 52 per cent needed extra help with learning.

I turn now to a practical reform suggestion from the Miracle Babies Foundation and their prebudget proposal to expand their programs NurtureGroup and NurtureLine, including into regional areas. Miracle Babies proposed establishing 20 new NurtureGroups nationally, taking the total to 40 groups across Australia, and said those groups would provide play based, postdischarge support; access to allied health professionals; stronger early intervention referral pathways; reduced wait times; and better access to timely supports. Miracle Babies say that the NurtureGroup program may alleviate future demand for the NDIS by providing early, preventative and family centred support to children with increased developmental risk—including children with a history of prematurity, neonatal illness or a long-term medical condition diagnosis in the first five years of life.

After all, the title of this bill is 'Securing the NDIS for Future Generations'. Doesn't that sound sensible? The Miracle Babies NurtureGroup program delivered more than 33,000 parent-support interactions in 2025 and is embedded in more than 65 neonatal units around the country. I'd like to see more of this program in regional Australia. The NDIS review itself called for more support for children with developmental delays both inside and outside the NDIS. If government is serious about securing the NDIS, it should not only stop the rorts and register providers; it should also strengthen the earlier, community based supports that stop families from reaching deeper crisis in the first place. If we identify developmental concerns earlier, support parents earlier and build stronger referral pathways earlier, we can improve outcomes for children and reduce pressure on the NDIS later.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Mallee. Miracle Babies is based in my electorate, by the way.

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There you go! We need one in Mallee.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed. Great organisation.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, a very important bill for the future of our country and a very important bill amending a landmark piece of legislation that, yes, came out of the Gillard government. But I think it's fair to say that it has lost its way over the last 13 years. I want to acknowledge the speech that I heard just then from the member for Mallee and the speech that was given by the member for Herbert on his very personal position on this and his personal reflections. It's one thing to get up and read from your party's talking points. It's another thing to actually have a firsthand experience of what the NDIS means to one's own family.

Like the member for Herbert, I have a child who is on the NDIS—my youngest daughter, Sarah, who's now 23. We were told that she wouldn't survive my wife's pregnancy and, if she survived the pregnancy, she wouldn't survive the birth. Twenty-three years later, she's still with us. She just picked up her assistance dog yesterday, so she's a happy camper. But for the NDIS, I know Sarah's life would be very, very different. When Sarah was growing up, when she was a young kid, I was invited to go onto the board and become the President of the Sunshine Coast Children's Therapy Centre, which she used to attend as a young child. The member for Herbert, in his speech, picked up on the importance of early access and early intervention, and he's absolutely right. The earlier we can get on and help people, the better.

Sarah's physical disabilities were obviously picked up way before she was born, but they didn't actually pick up that Sarah had autism until she was 16, because—as you know as a famous paediatrician, Mr Deputy Speaker—girls are able to mask their autism so much better than boys. They do a lot a lot of things that are better than boys, but one of them is being able to mask those things. We do to be able to get in and pick up autism more quickly, particularly with young girls. Whilst, in my own case—in Sarah's case—we were able to get all of the physical supports around Sarah with her physical disabilities, we weren't really able to throw much support around her from an autism perspective until she was about 16. That creates problems in itself.

Having been in the parliament for 10 years, I can tell you that, certainly, since this government has been in power, the NDIS is the No. 1 issue of complaints that I receive from constituents. I receive them from mums and dads, I receive them from participants themselves, I receive them from the service providers, and I receive them from people who are alerting me to fraud. There are lots of problems with the NDIS, and it seems to me, not just having been the federal member but also having been a dad and someone who has worked in this sector as a volunteer, that a lot of the money that is paid out under the NDIS goes to people who are less deserving and not a lot of money goes to the people who really need it most. That is a cause of great concern to me.

We have some fundamental, systemic problems with the system that provide funding to people who don't need a lot of support. I was listening to the member for Herbert talking about a friend of his who has to demonstrate that he hasn't grown a leg back every 12 months. I mean, come on. This is not rocket science. How much does that cost the system? When the NDIS was first dreamt up, when it was first envisaged, we as a nation and we as a parliament thought, at maturity, there would be 400,000 people on the scheme. There are now 760,000 people on the scheme.

We spend as much money today on the NDIS as we do on the defence of this nation—$50 billion a year. That's on 760,000 people. We spend more money on the NDIS than we do on 27 million people for Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme combined. If anybody can tell me how that is a system that is working well, I'm all ears.

I'm loath to give a political speech on this issue because this is an issue that really transcends politics. I've been listening to some of the contributions made by those opposite, and, if you listen to them, all of the problems with the NDIS started in 2013, and all of the problems were on the path to being resolved in 2022.

Phillip Thompson (Herbert, Liberal National Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's like the Great Barrier Reef.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's like the Great Barrier Reef! This is a scheme that was designed by the Labor Party, and we supported it because we understand the importance of looking after our vulnerable. That's the difference in Australia. I think, generally speaking, Australia does it pretty well. We're not the European model of ridiculously high taxes and superwelfare, although we're certainly headed in that direction. We're not the United States model, where if you get sick it's virtually a death sentence unless you're very wealthy. Generally speaking, Australia, over successive governments, has walked that path pretty well. We, on both sides of the House, believe in things like a universal healthcare system, Medicare. The coalition supports Medicare, despite what those opposite say. They roll out their 'Mediscare' campaigns at every election. They say that we don't support the NDIS. It's all rubbish, of course, and to my last breath I'll support Medicare and the NDIS because I don't want to see a country like Australia end up with a health system like that of the United States. I love the United States. It's the land of the free and home of the brave—just don't get sick there.

But we have walked a much more humanitarian pathway in this country. We acknowledge that, if you have a significant and permanent disability, you should get cared for through the NDIS, subject to some other restrictions. But we have moved beyond that. We've moved beyond 'a significant and permanent disability', and significant bracket creep has entered into the scheme. Even though it's not capped, I am certainly hearing complaint after complaint from my constituents who are saying: 'What I was getting I'm now not. My circumstances haven't changed. It's just that the government have decided that they are going to clamp down on everything and everybody.'

There is absolutely no case or tolerance for fraud. There is no tolerance for fraudsters. We know that the NDIS is being rorted by a lot of people—certainly not everybody. It's a small number of people who are rorting the system, but they are making it difficult for everybody else because what that means is that governments of either persuasion get political pressure and have to try and create a more bureaucratic system. That means service providers' costs blow out.

For all of the complaints that I'm receiving about the rorts, I've got a lot of service providers in my electorate of Fisher who are actually telling me: 'You know what? You can keep your NDIS, because I can't make money out of it anymore. It is being locked down with such bureaucracy that I'd just rather not deal with it, because it's costing too much money to be able to provide these services. So I'm out.' In a city like Melbourne or Sydney or Brisbane, that might be okay because there'll be other people that will pick up the slack. But, in rural and regional Australia, there are not the service providers that we need. If a service provider says, 'This is too hard. You're making it too difficult for me to be able to run a business, with all of the red tape and bureaucracy and everything I've got to do. I'm just going to go back and have a 100 per cent private practice,' then those people who live in rural and regional Australia will not get the supports that they need and deserve—the same supports, in the same way, as if they were a child or a person with a disability who lives in the city.

That's the fine line that we've got to walk. We've got to ensure that we crack down on the shonks but, at the same time, that we don't make it so damn difficult for the service providers that they just close up shop, go back to private practice and get rid of the NDIS. That would be a bad thing for people who need their services like physio, like speech pathology and like all the other many and varied services that people need.

Australians are doing it incredibly tough. We are in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. I know what it was like pre NDIS. We were constantly putting our hands in our pockets for the myriad of specialists that my daughter needed. Back then, I was a barrister; I could afford it. But many, many families are not in that situation. The vast majority of Australian families were not and are not in that situation. That's why we have to get this right.

On the current trajectory, the NDIS is expected to cost a hundred billion dollars a year within 10 years. If we don't get this right, then, at some point, some future government is going to say: 'That's it. We can't do this anymore. The NDIS is gone.' That would be a disaster for families like the member for Herbert's, mine and those of 760,000-odd Australians around the country. We've got to make this a better system, we've got to make it a fairer system and we've got to crack down on the shonks. Hopefully, this bill will do that, but we'll keep a close eye on it from the opposition.

Tom Venning (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The National Disability Insurance Scheme is a headline generator, a conversation starter and a source of continual work for my electorate office. It is both a vital support mechanism and a system that has regularly let people down. The coalition understands that the NDIS remains a significant social reform in our history. However, we must pose a hard question: if the NDIS is here to support people in need, who is going to support the NDIS?

When the scheme was first proposed, it received bipartisan support across this chamber. We agreed that the previous system was failing. The old system was fragmented and unfair. People with disabilities were falling through the cracks of a broken system. The vision of the NDIS was clear; it was meant to be an insurance scheme, not a welfare system to exploit. It was designed to invest in people early, to improve outcomes and to reduce the overall cost over their lifetimes. This was the correct goal. Every member supported that goal. We wanted a system that would give people choice and give people control. We wanted a system that would help people participate fully in our society. That is the scheme that we voted for. That is the scheme Australians thought that they were getting.

But, today, we're looking at a scheme that has drifted from its intent. The financial trajectory of the NDIS is unsustainable. When the scheme was established, we were given projections about its costs. Those projections have blown out of the water entirely. We are now looking at a scheme that is costing tens of billions of dollars more than anyone could have anticipated. If we do not intervene, the NDIS will soon cost more than Medicare. Under Labor, the NDIS costs more than defence—more than defence! This is not a sustainable pathway. We simply cannot ignore these numbers. We have a responsibility to manage the budget carefully. We have a responsibility to ensure that tax revenue is used effectively.

The Labor government has failed to take this responsibility seriously. They have allowed costs to spiral out of control. They've ignored the warning signs. They have focused on a short-term political gain rather than the long-term viability of the NDIS. We need a government that is willing to make the tough decisions. We need a government that is willing to support and secure the future of the NDIS. I do not say this to be partisan. I say this because the reality is stark. The government had years to address these cost pressures. They received report after report warning them about the financial trajectory of the scheme, yet their response has been slow. Indeed, when the coalition was in government, we put in legislation to make the NDIS sustainable. Labor voted against those measures—the hypocrisy.

Labor have introduced minor tweaks when we need structural reform. They have formed committees and ordered reviews instead of taking decisive action to fix the problems. The lack of leadership is putting the entire scheme at risk. When a government fails to manage the budget of a major program, it is the people who rely on that program who suffer. If the NDIS collapses under its own weight, it is the participants who will lose their support entirely. This is why we must act now. We cannot wait for another review. We cannot wait for another election. Commonsense reforms are needed to rein in the costs and ensure the scheme is there for those who truly need it in their lives. The legislation before us, the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, is a step in the right direction. It aims to put guardrails around the scheme. It aims to ensure that the funding is targeted to those who need it most. It is about restoring the original intent of the NDIS as an insurance scheme.

One of the main reasons the costs have spiralled out of control is the lack of integrity in the system. The NDIS has become a soft target for those who wish to exploit it. We have all heard the stories. We have all seen the reports and the shock pieces on social media. There are providers charging exorbitant fees and claiming payments for basic assistance needs. They do this simply because the participant has an NDIS plan. These bad apples see the NDIS as a golden ticket, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to get rich quick. This has to stop. There are businesses that have sprung up overnight to take advantage of funding, but this is not just a few bad apples; it's a whole damn orchard of NDIS scammers.

This is a systemic problem. The system was designed with a high level of trust. It was assumed that providers would act in the best interest of their participants. Unfortunately, that trust has been used and it has been abused. The focus has shifted from providing necessary support to gouging profits. This is a rampant and disgraceful betrayal of the taxpayers who fund the scheme and a betrayal of the vulnerable Australians who need our help. Thus, we find ourselves at a critical juncture. We must ask ourselves a very serious question about the future viability of the program. I ask again: if the NDIS is here to support the people in need, who is going to support the NDIS?

Let us look closely at how the system is being milked. We see providers charging double or triple the market rate for everyday services. A service that costs one price for a regular citizen suddenly costs vastly more on the NDIS. That is a rort. We see invoicing for services that were never delivered. We see unnecessary therapies that do not align with the treatment plans. We see aggressive marketing tactics aimed at vulnerable people. We see pressure. We see pain. We see filthy behaviours that target the most weak and helpless Australians. This is a completely unacceptable situation, and this Labor government has been far too slow to crack down on this horrific behaviour.

When people see this kind of waste and abuse, it undermines public confidence in the entire system. Australians are generous people. They really are. They are willing to pay taxes for this support, but they expect their money to be used wisely. They do not want their taxes lining the pockets of unscrupulous operators. The government has a duty to protect the integrity of the scheme. They have a duty to ensure that every dollar spent is a dollar that directly benefits the person with a disability. By failing to act decisively against these scammers, this government is failing in its duty. The real tragedy of this situation is the impact it has on the genuine participants of the scheme. Every dollar that is wasted on scams is a dollar lost. It is not available for someone who genuinely needs that support. In my electorate, 5,666 people are supported by the NDIS, many of them with profound disabilities living hundreds of kilometres from the nearest specialised medical facilities. We have families who are exhausted, fighting bureaucratic battles to get care for their children, their parents or their partners. Meanwhile, money is draining out of the system at the other end. This is deeply unfair.

The system has been incredibly complex and difficult to navigate. Genuine participants are forced to jump through endless hoops to prove their need. They face a constant burden of administration and paperwork just to survive day to day in this system. Yet the scammers seem to navigate the system with ease. They know how to game the rules. They know how to extract the maximum profits with the minimum amount of effort. This creates a two-tiered system. Those who are honest and play by the rules are penalised while those who are dishonest are rewarded. We've got to flip the script. We must make it easier for genuine participants to get the support that they need. We must make it harder for scammers to exploit the system. This requires a fundamental shift in how the scheme is administered. It requires a government that is vigilant, proactive and willing to enforce the rules.

The bill before us today seeks to address some of these critical issues. It introduces tighter controls on how funds can be spent. It provides greater powers to the regulatory body to investigate and prosecute fraud. It aims to clarify the definition of 'reasonable and necessary supports', ensuring that funding is directed towards evidence based therapies and interventions. These are necessary steps, and we support the intent of these measures. We believe that we must tighten the rules to protect the very purpose of the scheme. But legislation alone is simply not enough. The government must be committed to implementing these changes effectively. They must provide the resources necessary to ensure that these new rules are enforced. They must work closely with the states and the territories to ensure a consistent approach across the entire country.

We also need to look beyond the immediate term. We need a long-term strategy for the NDIS. We need to integrate the scheme more effectively with our mainstream services. The NDIS was never meant to be an oasis in a desert; it was meant to work alongside other services to provide holistic support. The government has neglected this aspect of the design. They have allowed the NDIS to become the only option for many people, leading to a massive increase in its demand. We need to build the capacity of mainstream services so that people with disabilities can get the support they need in places like Kadina, Port Augusta, Port Lincoln and Whyalla without having to rely solely on the NDIS.

If we want to secure the NDIS for future generations, we must act with urgency and purpose. We must acknowledge that the current path is completely unsustainable. The financial pressures are real and growing rapidly every single passing day. We cannot simply wish them away or ignore them for political convenience. We owe it to the current participants to fix the system and clean up the mess. We owe it to the young children who will need this scheme in the decades to come. We owe it to the taxpayers, who are funding this vital national endeavour.

The government must step up and show real leadership right now. They must stop playing at the edges and start delivering the structural reform that is so desperately needed. They must clear out the scammers and the rorters, who are treating this scheme like an easy target to fatten their bank accounts. They must restore integrity in the system so that public confidence can be rebuilt.

We wanted to build a society where people with disabilities were valued, respected and supported to live their best lives. We wanted a system that provided certainty and security. That vision is still entirely valid. It is still worth fighting for. But a vision without a sustainable foundation is just a dream. We can make this dream a reality, but we must answer this question: if the NDIS is here to support people in need, who is going to support the NDIS? To this I say the coalition is ready to answer the call.

Michelle Landry (Capricornia, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on an issue that matters deeply to Australians with disability, to their families, to the carers and to the many service providers who support them every single day. The coalition have always supported the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and we will continue to support it. The NDIS is one of the most important reforms in this country. It has changed lives by giving Australians with significant and permanent disability more dignity, more independence and more choice. But, if the scheme is going to keep doing what it was set up to do, it has to be sustainable, fair and properly run. Right now, Labor is not getting that right.

Let me be clear. The coalition supports the NDIS. We back it because we know how important it is to Australians with disability and their families. But supporting the NDIS does not mean giving Labor a free pass for poor management. A scheme this important cannot be left to drift, and it cannot be changed in a rush, without proper consultation, proper safeguards and clear answers for the people who rely on it.

Labor keeps changing its story on the NDIS. In April 2023, it said it would bring annual growth down to eight per cent. Then it shifted again and said growth would be brought down to five and six per cent over the medium term. But growth is still sitting at 10.3 per cent. That tells you that Labor has not been managing this well. It's been playing catch-up the whole way through.

The NDIS was originally expected to support about 410,000 Australians. Today, it supports more than 760,000 people. It was once expected to cost around $13.6 billion. This year, it's around $50 billion, and it is projected to rise to around $70 billion by the end of the decade. That sort of growth cannot continue without proper planning, proper safeguards and proper consultation with the people who rely on the scheme.

What worries people is that Labor is once again chasing savings without clearly telling Australians what these changes will mean in real life. Families, participants and providers are worried, and they have every right to be. The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 sets up a new framework for eligibility and access, but it still leaves too many unanswered questions about how these new assessments will actually work and whether people will keep the support they depend on. For families already under pressure, the uncertainty is not some policy detail in Canberra; it is deeply personal.

The bill sets up the legal mechanism for a new approach to eligibility based on functional capacity rather than diagnosis alone, but it does not yet give families the detail they need to understand how that assessment will operate in real life. That is the source of so much anxiety. Parents want to know whether their child will still qualify. Carers want to know whether the support their loved ones depend on will be reduced. Existing participants want to know whether they will be forced to repeatedly prove what is already well understood about their disability and their daily needs. Under this proposal, existing participants will be reassessed over several years from 2028. With more than 760,000 people in the scheme, this is a huge task.

If people lose access to the NDIS or have support cut back, where are they supposed to go? Our health system is already under enormous pressure. GPS are stretched, specialists' waiting times are too long, and families are still paying too much out of pocket. If the Commonwealth shifts the burden without building up other services, families will pay the price. That is why the government should not be pushing through major changes without a clear plan and proper consultation with the disability community.

At the same time, the scheme does need stronger safeguards. Fraud and exploitation are real problems, and every dollar lost is a dollar taken away from an Australian with a disability who genuinely needs support. We also support measures that make sure participants or their trusted nominees stay in control of reassessment decisions, instead of leaving room for misuse by others in the system.

But protecting the integrity of the NDIS must never come at the expense of the people it was created to support. In Capricornia alone, there are 5,442 NDIS participants. These are not just figures in a briefing note; these are local families who rely on this support every single day. I have spoken with Susan McHugh, CEO and co-founder of Compass House in Rockhampton. Compass House is an NDIS-registered psychosocial disability provider supporting people with complex conditions in Central Queensland. It has reported zero unplanned psychiatric hospital admissions since 2020 for participants receiving full daily support. That is not accidental. It shows what properly resourced relationship-based support can achieve.

Susan McHugh also warned that this bill could do real harm to people with mental health disabilities if it is not amended. She makes the point that brief one-off assessments do not properly capture conditions that come and go, that suspending plans when a participant is uncontactable can be dangerous, as a lack of response may actually be part of a crisis, and that extra compliance demands mean very little if the pricing system still fails to reflect the real cost of complex support. That is a serious warning from a local provider on the ground, and this parliament should listen.

There are also serious concerns about the government giving itself broader powers to reduce funding for certain support categories, in particular social, civic and community participation supports and some capacity-building activities. These are not optional extras in the lives of many participants. These supports help people build confidence, develop life skills, participate in their community and maintain independence. Any change in this area must be handled with extreme care, because a reduction on paper can mean isolation, lost opportunity and greater pressure on families in the real world.

The bill also changes the way participant plans will operate. Right now, plans do not have an official end date and, in most cases, any unspent funds can roll over into the next year. Under this bill, plans will have a legislated end date and unspent funds will no longer be carried over.

On integrity, the coalition has been clear: we will support measures that crack down on fraud, noncompliance and exploitation. Public confidence in the NDIS depends on knowing the money is going to real supports for real people. When around 94 per cent of providers are unregistered and there are serious concerns about non-compliant or fraudulent claims, every member of this House should be paying attention. Fraud not only wastes taxpayer money; it takes support away from Australians with disability. That is why stronger provider registration, better record retention and tighter claims timeframes matter. But these measures should go after the crooks, not make life harder for honest participants and providers who are doing the right thing. Reform has to be fair as well as firm. But these measures should go after the crooks, not make life harder for honest participants and providers who are doing the right thing. Reform has to be fair as well as firm.

Behind those numbers is Paul, a Capricornia constituent caring for his wife Sharon after she was diagnosed with early onset dementia. It is a cruel disease that takes a person's memory, independence and quality of life little by little. For nearly two years, my office has worked with Paul to fight for the basic support Sharon needs. As Sharon's condition got worse, the funding simply was not enough. Because there was not enough care at home, she suffered a serious fall that put her in hospital for about six months. If Sharon had sufficient carer funding, that injury may well have been avoided. During Sharon's long hospital stay, Paul was working around the clock with the hospital and the NDIS to get an adequate care plan in place, all while continuing to work full time. Red tape between the hospital and the NDIS delayed Sharon's release. She was medically fit to leave, but it was determined she could not return home. The system completely failed them.

Then there's Mitchell, a 36-year-old man living with a rare auto-immune condition who has now also suffered a stroke and needs even greater support. It took 14 months of fighting by his parents alongside my office, to secure an increase in his NDIS funding to an adequate level. During that same time, his mother, his primary carer, was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer and was undergoing treatment while still battling the system to make sure her son was not left behind. No family facing that kind of heartbreak should also have to wage a bureaucratic war just to access basic care.

These are not one-off stories. They show what happens when the system lets people down. It's not ministers or bureaucrats who carry the cost. It's families already under pressure. It's carers trying to hold everything together. It's participants whose safety, independence and dignity depend on the right support being there when they need it. That is why every change in this bill matters. These stories are a reminder that behind every policy change is a real person, a real family and real pressure on households already doing it tough. The coalition will continue to support the NDIS, but we also we will also keep holding Labor to account for how it manages the scheme.

Australians with disability deserve reform that is careful, compassionate and properly considered. They deserve consultation, clarity and common sense. They deserve a government that understands sustainability is important and that sustainability cannot be achieved simply by setting savings targets and hoping the detail works itself out later. The coalition will continue to back the NDIS because we believe in it and in the Australians it supports. But we will keep holding Labor to account for every change it makes. Australians with disability deserve a government focused on supporting them, not one focused on chasing savings and fixing its budget problems on the backs of vulnerable people. Australians with disability are not a line item in Labor's budget, and they should never be treated like one.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm so very pleased that the Minister for Veterans' Affairs is at the table and can hear this contribution because he needs to. He needs to know that certainly the veterans component of the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the budget that was handed down by the member for Rankin, the Treasurer, has been met with white hot anger in the veterans community. I'm sure he is receiving the same sort of emails that I am, and I'm sure he's having some of those discussions that I am and that the shadow minister behind me, the member for Herbert, who looks after defence materiel and other things and is a veteran himself, is having.

Let me tell you, the Department of Veterans' Affairs changes, the staff cuts and the changes to the NDIS in the budget with the veterans component attached are simply not good enough, Minister. It's not always right, when you are a minister, to just take on board what the bureaucrats ask you to do and tell you to do. It's not always right when the Expenditure Review Committee overrules what you take to them—Minister, I have respect for you. I do, and I know it's a difficult job you have. I do. I told you to look after yourself when you came to Wagga Wagga to visit Pro Patria, and I did, but you have to be strong when you're around that cabinet table and you're making commitments and input for and on behalf of veterans because there are people in this place—many of them are on your frontbench—who treat veterans like a number. They are real people. They have fought for this country, they have bled for this country and they deserve the very best from this government and this country when the time comes to hang up their uniform.

From 1 July 2027, the DVA will cap allied health spending at $5,000 per veteran per year. This replaces the current 12-session treatment cycle per provider—that is, their general practitioner can recommend seeing a psychologist, and then 12 psychology sessions will be authorised.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I want to bring the minister back to the content of the bill before us. This is the bill in relation to the National Disability Insurance Scheme amendment.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker, but the cap is bundled with $169.7 million to increase allied health provider fees to NDIS rates—the first significant fee increase in more than 20 years. If that isn't relevant and if veterans aren't relevant to a discussion in this place, then I don't know what is, with all due respect. Our veterans out there are hurting. Our veterans are part and parcel of the NDIS changes in the budget. If that's not being relevant to the bill before us, then quite frankly I don't know what is. Our veterans deserve more; our veterans deserve better. I know I say that with passion. I find it extraordinary that I'm corrected from the chair when the minister at the table, who is responsible for veterans, wasn't arcing up.

Veterans with acute or critical needs can apparently apply for funding above the cap, but the process for doing so has not yet been designed, and it leaves significant uncertainty for veterans. Those veterans who happen to be bundled up with the NDIS and with disability services are being left high and dry by this government, and that is perfectly relevant to the legislation before this House. If the coalition and the shadow minister for veterans affairs can't speak up for veterans affairs and if the veteran behind me—the member for Herbert, who has given more for this country than most of us in this chamber and certainly anyone in this chamber right now—can't, then I don't know who can. So, with all due respect, I take your point of order, but it is perfectly relevant to the legislation.

Further to the legislation, aside from veterans, the NDIS is a mess. It is a total shamble. It is chaotic. Deputy Speaker and Member for Bendigo, I'm sure your office has been—just as mine has been and just as everybody who sits in this place has been—inundated in recent years with complaints, concerns and suggested changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme. I am a supporter of the NDIS. The member for Capricornia, who spoke before me, is a supporter of the NDIS. And, when the former Labor New South Wales cabinet minister John Della Bosca was around, it was his job, before the NDIS was legislated and after former prime minister Gillard had put the scheme up for discussion—he was seeking support. I was the first federal member from New South Wales to endorse the everyone counts campaign. It wasn't something that had been funded. It wasn't something the coalition had come out and said, 'You need to support the NDIS'—but I knew the work that Kurrajong Waratah in particular had done in the early intervention space in Wagga Wagga for nigh on six decades, and I knew that if that organisation supported it then it was incumbent upon me to do the same.

Those people on NDIS are our most vulnerable, and those veterans who are on NDIS are in the same category. They are in the same boat. They deserve every bit of help that we can give them, and to be short changed—as this mean spirited, cruel government is doing at the moment—is beyond the pale. Minister, I would appeal to your better judgement to not always accept what the bureaucrats down the hill bring you and to not always accept what is said around the cabinet table. There are people around that cabinet table who just rely on numbers. There are people around that cabinet table who just believe in savings.

When the savings come at the expense of those people who've donned a uniform, gone out and protected us—I feel safer at night knowing that they have, but they deserve the very best treatment that we can provide—it's not right. It is not right that they are being neglected and ignored as part of this legislation by this government in this appalling budget—a budget of broken promises, a budget that there has to be some restoration of. Minister, it's your responsibility to do just that. As I said, I've got respect for you. Please, for and on behalf of the veterans who you are supposed to serve, do the right thing.

When it comes to the NDIS, the difficulty with the changes that are being made as part of this broken-promises budget is that they are going to hurt Australia's most vulnerable—particularly in regional, rural and remote Australia. It wasn't bad enough that, in January, this government made changes by which the travel component of service appointments was bundled up. For anybody living an hour from a major regional centre—such as Townsville, Wagga Wagga, Dubbo, Tamworth, Bendigo, and those sorts of places where there are service providers—the travel was all of a sudden part of the service fee. They stopped doing their speech therapy. They stopped doing their podiatry, because the service provider felt as though they couldn't then continue to provide the same service at less expense.

Then we've got the fuel crisis on top of that, which has hit regional communities even harder. But city-centric MPs, particularly those around the cabinet table, would not know that. They wouldn't care about it either. They wouldn't care about it, because they only ever think of themselves. They only ever think of the budget bottom line. I've sat around that cabinet table, and I've had those discussions. I have banged my fist on that table and said, 'This simply isn't good enough.' It's not good enough when you are a regional member at the cabinet table. When you are a veterans' affairs minister at the cabinet table, you have to stick up for the people who send you here to do the job because, if you don't, no-one will.

Then you get the likes of the Treasurer—the city based, Brisbane based member for Rankin. They don't understand the hardships that regional Australians endure every day simply to get podiatry, speech therapy, physiotherapy and all of those sorts of things. They should listen to the veterans. Every piece of legislation in this place should have a component of: how will this affect regional Australians? How will this affect veterans? How will this affect veterans who live in regional Australia? They're doing it the toughest, and I feel for them. I will fight for you. I will fight for them. I want you to know that.

This minister needs to do the same because, long after our political careers are over—and they are only fleeting; we are only custodians of positions—people will look back. They will stop you in the street, and they will say: 'What did you do for me when that budget of broken promises was handed down in 2026? Did you stick up for me? Did you have my back like I had yours when I put the uniform on, went on tours of duty and served this country?' You need to be able to look back at those people, Minister, and say, 'Yes, I did.' At the moment, I fear that you don't.

It's a pressing thing on each and every one of us to stick up for the people whose lives depend on it. At the moment, the NDIS does need an audit. With these changes brought about in this budget, you know who'll be okay? 'She'll be okay, mate.' It'll be the shysters, the grifters, those vile rent-seekers and the charlatans who pervade that sector and sponge off Australia's most vulnerable. They'll still get paid. They'll still get the work and the money that's coming to them.

I could not believe it when, a few years ago in Wagga Wagga, a mother of a Down syndrome son came to see me and said her son needed to go and prove it every year. Every year, they had to go to a GP to get a certificate to say his Down syndrome was still a condition. I mean, do you believe that? You don't get over Down syndrome. You don't recover from it. Yet he had to prove that he still had Down syndrome. That is the problem with the NDIS.

I'm not saying that the coalition covered itself in glory either, in one sense, because both sides of government have allowed the NDIS to grow into the beast that it has, to grow into the monster that it has, to allow some of these service providers to take the Commonwealth for granted. It's not right. That is why a full audit is needed to eke those people out and, in some cases where corruption can be proved, to send them to jail where they belong because they are sponging off and bleeding dry the vulnerable members of our community who need our support and our assistance. This legislation doesn't give it to them. They are going to be the ones who are going to suffer the most because their disabilities aren't going to improve.

You only have to listen to your constituents to know that. In Wagga Wagga, Donalee Gregory talks about the lack of consideration for each child's development journey. Caroline Hillier from Woodstock says that removing participants is blaming people with disabilities, not the cause of the cost blowouts. Julia Palmer from Cowra, whose 18-year-old son has high needs, says: 'I wish to note I understand why there needs to be cuts to the NDIS. However, I would humbly suggest the government go after those who are rorting the system, not the most vulnerable participants, as appears to be the case in my situation.' Do you know what? Julia and Caroline and Donnalee are all very correct. They are all very correct. The government needs to listen to people such as them.

The Minister for Veterans' Affairs needs to step up. He does. The NDIS ministers—I appreciate we've got one in this place and one in the Senate—also need to step up. They need to do an audit into the NDIS and get rid of these grafters and shifty people who are taking advantage of Australia's most vulnerable. (Time expired)

Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens and I are opposing the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. The sheer volume of amendments being moved to this bill demonstrates that this bill just should not pass in its current form. We'll be supporting most of the amendments, despite them not sufficiently addressing the scale of harm in the government's bill. The Greens will be moving our own amendments in the Senate.

The largest saving in this budget is $37.8 billion in cuts to the NDIS to be implemented via the changes in this bill. Here's what those changes will actually mean. They're changing the definition of permanent disability. Under this new provision, NDIS access won't be granted until all other medical treatment options have been exhausted and have failed to reduce people's disability. So if you can't afford to pursue all treatment options, too bad, you can't access the NDIS. They are going to reassess all participants and remove 160,000 people from the scheme, and it's still unclear what alternative supports will be available for that cohort. It's no wonder that people are rightly very, very scared. This bill gives the minister the ability to make broad reductions to entire groups of supports, which will enable a 50 per cent funding cut to every participant's social and community participation supports and a 10 per cent cut to their capacity-building supports, with absolutely no regard to what people actually need.

It's very clear to me that there are some problems with the way the NDIS operates, which have allowed the scheme to be exploited. Large providers who monopolise the system are the cause of so much fraud and abuse of disabled participants, in part because the NDIA does not require them to implement checks, balances or strong anti-fraud safeguards. No-one cares more about fraud than disabled people and their families, because they're the ones that suffer at the hands of fraudulent providers. But we don't tackle those issues with the NDIS, and we don't solve those problems, by kicking people off the scheme or making disabled people worse off by removing the support they so desperately need. When there's fraud in Medicare, we don't just kick people off it or reduce people's support because we recognise that as an essential service.

I sent out a survey about these cuts to my electorate, to people on the NDIS and those supporting someone on the NDIS who my office has directly helped with advocacy. Every single respondent said they were concerned about the effects of these cuts, about either being kicked off the scheme or having absolutely essential supports cut. One person supporting someone on the scheme said that they both—that's the person supporting and the person on the scheme—would not be able to work, contribute or live without the NDIS. Another said:

We barely survived before, I am absolutely terrified of going back.

Many others also said their participation in the workforce was contingent on the support they receive as well as the ability to stay out of hospital and to stay in stable housing. The social and community support that has been one of the main targets for the government's cuts means so much to participants because it allows them to participate in society. It's crucial for mental and physical health.

One participant who responded to my survey is blind and relies on support workers to get out and about. That has allowed them to get involved in competitive sport—which is great—which has in turn improved their health and resulted in fewer falls and hospitalisations. Of the changes, they said:

They will reverse the good and the feeling that I am an important part of society—at the moment I feel that only gas and coal bosses are important, and they all wish we'd just shut up and die.

The participants and carers from whom I've heard are also well aware that some level of fraud and exploitation is happening within the scheme. Many of them responded to my survey unprompted about how to actually address these issues. Notably, their suggestions don't include kicking people off the scheme. One person pointed out the huge amounts of money wasted by the NDIA on legal fees because participants are forced to go to the ART to get the care they need. They rightly point out that, if participants were given appropriate supports in the first place, there would be less need for costly review processes. Another simply said:

Don't target the participants, target the unscrupulous service providers and fraudsters.

The proposed changes we are debating give me absolutely no confidence that they will target those who are genuinely exploiting the NDIS. Rather, it's clear the government is using this as cover to unceremoniously and radically reduce the size of the scheme in an attempt to avoid political blowback. One of the survey respondents summed it up really well:

I am disgusted and horrified that the media narratives and political agenda continues to attack marginalised people, in this case some of the most vulnerable people in our rich country, to save a few bucks. Meanwhile multinational corporations get away with making billion dollar profits and paying no tax, our natural resources are taken by foreign investors and the citizens of our country don't benefit at all.

At the end of the day, it's clear that disabled people will be significantly worse off. For this reason, the Greens and I will be strongly opposing this bill.

Leon Rebello (McPherson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The National Disability Insurance Scheme is one of Australia's most significant social reforms. It exists because Australians believe that people with significant and permanent disability deserve dignity, independence and the opportunity to live full lives. This view is entirely shared by the coalition. But today we're seeing that families across the country are deeply anxious. This isn't because they oppose reform but because they fear that this government is asking them to carry the cost of its failure to properly manage the scheme. On the other side, there's also the anxiety of the Australian taxpayer who has no issue with providing support to those who are in genuine need but who right now feels that they're being ripped off and rorted. We've seen this across the country. We've seen it on social media. We've seen it playing out across the media as well.

There are a few different points I'd like to make in the course of my contribution on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. Firstly, it is that the coalition is a supporter of the NDIS. It is that sustainability matters. It is that fraud and waste must be tackled, that participants and families must not pay the price for government incompetence and that reform must be careful, transparent and compassionate.

When I speak to people across my electorate, we hear about their views on the NDIS. At a time when Australians are really hurting due to this cost-of-living crisis, it's not unexpected that people raise with me their concerns about the areas of government expenditure, and one of those that I hear about is the NDIS. The NDIS was originally expected to cost $13.6 billion, but we've seen that the NDIS bill is approximately $50 billion each year, and it's projected to increase towards the $70 billion mark by the end of the decade. We have 761,426 participants nationally, with around 3,790 participants in my electorate of McPherson, and we have a growth rate of around 10.3 per cent.

The issue is not—and this is not what we're discussing—whether the NDIS should exist or not. The issue is whether the government is able to make it sustainable without leaving Australians with a disability worse off, and that is something that is very important in the context of this debate. At the end of the day, it's about people. It's about the parents, the carers, the siblings, the support workers and the people who are doing their best to try and live independently. It's about people who have gone through an experience or who have been born with or developed certain conditions or issues that, through no fault of their own, have put them in a difficult situation. These people are not the problem. The problem is that, as with many different forms of government expenditure, there are people who can misuse the system. There is fraud, waste, weak oversight, poor administration and a lack of clarity. That is exactly what the government must address.

This is, I'll point out, Labor's third attempt to slow NDIS growth, and that's quite concerning. We have seen this gradual increase. It's gradual, but it's a persistent increase in the cost of the NDIS. Conversely, in the conversations that I've had with people across my electorate and with people who have written to me from across the country, we've also seen a reduction in the public confidence in the NDIS. Without that public confidence, there is no public licence for it. This is where the integrity of the system becomes so critically important.

In 2023, Labor promised a growth cap of eight per cent, and then they moved that target to 5.6 per cent, but we're still seeing growth sitting at the 10.3 per cent mark. The government is now trying to aim it at two per cent, which, as you can see, based on the record, doesn't really instil a sense of confidence.

The government has announced savings before it has properly explained the human consequences. As I said at the outset, most people I speak to—in fact, most Australians—say to me that they have absolutely no issue in putting out money to support Australians in genuine need. The issue comes where it is not used effectively or where those people do not actually get the benefit of the funds that are being used. This bill creates a new eligibility framework, new assessments and reassessments of existing participants, but it doesn't clearly explain how those assessments work, who conducts them, what thresholds apply and where people go if they are removed from the program. Families are being asked to trust a system that the government itself has not fully outlined or designed, and this is at a time where the level of trust not only in politics and government but in the NDIS is not very high.

I'd like to speak to a particular example, because this, I think, gives the human element and the human aspect of the NDIS. In my electorate, I've had many people who are involved in the NDIS reach out to me, whether they're participants or they're providers. Since I was elected, they've persistently spoken about a system that is broken. They've spoken about a system that doesn't actually do what it is or was intended to do. The casualties of those inefficiencies and of a broken system are people such as 12-year-old Levi. Michelle, who's the mother of 12-year-old Levi, reached out to my office towards the end of last year. Levi has cerebral palsy. He's a terrific, energetic and enlightening young man. Towards the end of last year, I had the opportunity to meet Levi at one of the end-of-year school awards. Levi's smile absolutely lit up the stage.

But Levi and his mum have been going through some challenges with the NDIS, and Levi's mum, Michelle, contacted my office seeking some urgent assistance regarding significant delays in the processing of Levi's NDIS plan. Those issues had been pending since July 2025. They came to my office because Levi hadn't had an updated plan in nearly five years, despite the fact that he requires critical supports, including a communication device to assist with his transition to high school. As well, Levi is in a mechanical wheelchair. Michelle said to me that her experience was of ongoing difficulties obtaining clear information from the NDIS. She received inconsistent updates and faced communication barriers with staff, and that situation was particularly worsened because of Michelle's own health issues. Michelle had a lung cancer diagnosis and surgery, which then limited her ability to act as a carer for Levi.

Once we reached out to the NDIS, the NDIS confirmed that contact was made with Michelle towards the end of November in 2025, and that matter was referred to the appropriate team for action. It was able to be addressed and there was an outcome that was favourable for Levi. But the point is that the situation shouldn't take the mother, who's obviously going through a lot herself, having to reach out to their federal member of parliament to then make representations on her behalf because a system that was designed to protect people exactly like 12-year-old Levi is not working and is broken. That is fundamentally what we need to be addressing here today.

There is, indeed, a story behind each and every one of the names of the people who are involved in the NDIS, and there are many people on both sides—people who are providers and people who are participants in the system—who have their experiences and their stories. But the other side of this debate that I will talk to is a part that has gained a lot of national attention, and that is the fraud issues with the NDIS. That, ultimately, pierces the integrity of the system. This is where we on the opposition side of this chamber can absolutely support reform, because reform is needed and is well and truly overdue. It's only reform that will ensure that funds are preserved to go to the right place and to make sure that people like Levi are able to get the support that they need.

But we don't think this proposed legislation is going to fix the NDIS. We don't think this goes far enough. We don't think it will do what it needs to do in order to restore integrity to the NDIS. I implore the government to reconsider its approach to the NDIS more broadly to make sure that we are actually going to address the issues that we are seeing in the NDIS. The fact that 94 per cent of providers are currently unregistered is something that, prior to entering politics, I had absolutely no idea about. It is absolutely shocking that, while across various industries, various sectors and professional bodies, if you want to practise in certain fields, you need to be registered, in the NDIS there's a different standard.

We are also seeing the value of the fraudulent activity, which goes to the integrity of the NDIS. Six to 10 per cent of claim outlays, according to the ANAO's estimates, are potentially fraudulent, incorrect or non-compliant. Based on 2025 spending, that's estimated to be between $2.9 billion and $4.8 billion of leakage annually, which could rise to $8 billion by the end of the decade. This is at a time when Australians are really struggling to keep up with their own payments, when Australians who have disabilities aren't able to access the care that they need and when people like Levi are not able to get immediate access to the support that they need. Every dollar that is lost to fraud is a dollar that's taken away from Australians with a disability.

On the fraud side, taxpayers deserve accountability, participants deserve protection and whistleblowers deserve support, not silence. We need to make sure that we build a system that Australians can be proud of, not a system that Australians are concerned about. Ultimately, if we don't do that, the future of the NDIS and everybody that it supports is in jeopardy. When I speak to people across my electorate, they talk to me about their needs, and there is no doubt that there is a considerable need on the Gold Coast, as there is, I'm sure, across the country. There is no shortage of funds in this space. What there is a shortage of is efficiency. We on this side of the House will strongly support and work with the government in doing whatever it takes to ensure we get through this and we're able to create a system that is going to instil confidence in the public.

The government can't continue to claim that it's protecting the NDIS while billions are leaking out through fraud and exploitation. We need to make sure we see reform that doesn't overburden those who are doing the right thing, those who are legitimate providers and those who are legitimate participants. We can't drive allied health workers out, and we're seeing that happen. I'm seeing it time and time again. A number of people who work in that space have reached out to me to say that they are overburdened with reporting, with paperwork. They're forced to complete paperwork that they feel—and I hear this time and time again—is never read by people. We need to have a system that gets past the bureaucracy and goes directly to the needs of the participants. It needs to put the participants first, and it needs to support those who are doing the right thing, support participants and work with them to help them get ahead. At the end of the day, restoring integrity in the NDIS is going to be the only way we can ensure it remains a long-term solution to supporting Australians with disabilities.

The NDIS belongs to Australians and to Australians with disabilities, not to governments who are balancing budgets. Reform is necessary, and fraud must be stopped because we must secure the future of the NDIS, but we must do it without abandoning Australians who depend on it every single day.

Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. Before I go any further into detail, I want to take a moment to reflect on what people in my community are actually experiencing right now. A constituent who is looking after elderly parents as well as a disabled child wrote to me recently, 'I'm not a case number on a bureaucratic desk; I'm a drowning mother in your community.' Other comments from recent emails demonstrate similar struggles: 'It's going to be another uphill battle for me to survive with the cuts to the NDIS. I have no hope left. I'm so tired of fighting the system.' Another one says, 'If this funding were to be cut, I feel it would have catastrophic consequences to my daughter's wellbeing.' Another wrote: 'I have no hope left. I'm really tired of fighting.' And another one says, 'This leaves us in a constant state of burnout and also highly concerned and worried not just for the present but also for the future.'

So this debate is not theoretical; it's playing out in people's lives. They are not isolated cases. These are real people, and they are anxious and uncertain. They're asking a very simple question of this parliament: 'Will the NDIS still be there for me when I need it?'

The National Disability Insurance Scheme is a really important social reform in the history of our nation. It was built on a simple but powerful principle: that Australians living with permanent and significant disability deserve dignity, independence and the opportunity to participate fully in our society. I remember when the then Labor government brought it in. I remember the then opposition leader, Tony Abbott, saying:

The NDIS is an idea whose time has come.

There was a lot of support for the concept of doing something like this. Precisely because the NDIS matters so deeply, we must get these reforms right. When we talk about the NDIS, we're not talking about abstract budget lines; we're talking about people: families, carers, communities. We're talking about Australians who rely on this scheme every single day.

I don't think anyone in this House disputes that the NDIS must be sustainable. The scheme's growing rapidly, and there are genuine concerns about its trajectory. It is absolutely critical that we deal with the fraud, the rorting and the inefficiencies that we all know are out there. This scheme and system must deliver value to the taxpayer, and we must ensure that support is there for future generations. But sustainability cannot come at the expense of fairness, and it must never come at the expense of the most vulnerable Australians.

It's worth noting that the Morrison government proposed, for NDIS applicants, independent assessments conducted by privately contracted allied health professionals. But Labor, then led by Bill Shorten, former member for Maribyrnong, ran what was a fairly effective scare campaign on the reforms and lobbied state leaders to block the changes, and it forced the coalition to abandon that policy in late 2021. There was an opportunity to build a more sustainable NDIS, and that opportunity, unfortunately, was lost, and we are now faced with greater changes to try and rein in the costs and rein in this scheme.

When I came to this place, I was getting a lot of inquiries about the NDIS and could see that there were a lot of problems with it. I asked colleagues who had been here through the coalition government and who I trust, 'Why couldn't we get it under control when we were in government?' And those people, who I trust, said, 'There were a lot of design flaws to begin with, and Labor wouldn't let us fix it, for partisan, political reasons.' And that is a real disappointment. We know from correspondence and stakeholder engagement that people are deeply worried about what the changes we're proposing now might mean for them, and that is why a Senate inquiry is critically important. These reforms must be properly scrutinised. It is absolutely critical that the Senate do its work and look at what these changes mean for Australians.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.